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604: Working ON the Business: What Does It Mean? with Enoch Sears: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

604: Working ON the Business: What Does It Mean? with Enoch Sears

Enoch Sears41min

Enoch Sears

00:00

It's about that shift from scarcity to abundance. Hello architect nation, and welcome to the Business of Architecture podcast. I'm your host for today's episode. My name is Enoch Sears, and the Business of Architecture is a team of experts in architectural business that help small firm practitioners slay, overwhelm, escape the feast or famine cycle, stabilize cash flow and move into abundance in their architecture design, landscape architecture, interior design and engineering practice, that's what we do here at Business of Architecture, and here on the podcast, we bring you conversations from the trenches about struggles, challenges and behind the scene, look at the smart practice method, which is the method that we teach here at Business of Architecture to help small firm practitioners be able to eliminate the things that get in the way of them doing the work, of you doing the work that you want to Do. We

Rion Willard

00:59

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. Let's

Enoch Sears

01:49

start this episode with a story. Something happened a couple years ago. I remember I was exposed to virtual reality for the first time, and I remember thinking, wouldn't that be cool if we had augmented reality, this is way back in the day. If you remember, we had those, like those Google Glasses, where they could get additional data about the world based upon what they could see in the glasses. I thought it was pretty cool. As a matter of fact, I gave a presentation on this at to the AIA one time at one of the conventions, talking about this idea of augmented reality. Well, hold that thought for a second. Let me give you a little sneak preview of what we're going to be going over. Today's episode is going to be all about working on the business and not in the business. This is something that we hear people talk about a lot. Why would we want to work on the business and not in the business? What actually does that mean? And is it even important? Well, what I'll tell you is that it's not important unless you want to have more freedom, you want to eliminate the things that currently get in the way of you focusing on the craft, and you want to have less stress in your life, more fulfillment, more profit, more fun. So if that's the case, you're in the right place. And today is going to be another episode where I'm going to be playing around with what I'm going to call augmented reality. So we're going to be using artificial intelligence. I and I did this in a previous podcast episode. You may have learned, but what I've done is I've taken one of the consulting calls that we do here in Business of Architecture, one of our coaching calls that we do with our paying clients, and I put it up into notebook LM, which is this Google product that then creates this conversation between these two artificially generated hosts talking about the subject matter of the asset that you give it. Now, the ability of what you can do with this is certainly an unbounded and I haven't explored the limits of it, but I thought this would be a great way to give you, as a listener, a sneak peek behind the scenes of what happens here at Business of Architecture with our paying clients. Because if you're currently not a client, if you've just been listening to the podcast for a while, if you're dealing with some of the challenges that small firm owners are facing again and again and again, having feeling like they're always having too many things on their plate, difficulty, challenges, maybe even feeling that hiring is hiring the right team members, impossible if you have any of these challenges like I mentioned, that's what we talk about here on the podcast, and these are the kind of issues that we help architecture firm owners overcome in our smart practice program. So what I've done with this coaching call is I've uploaded it to notebook LM. It's generated a conversation between these two artificially generated hosts talking about the contents of the of the coaching call. Why I thought this was cool is because to respect the privacy of our clients, I can't and I won't just upload a raw I'm not gonna you know that's. That's private content. We can't give away any of the content about what happens behind the scenes with our clients. But when I use the AI, or these artificial intelligence personalities to summarize the content, I think we'll find that we're able to get to give you some good information that gives you behind the scenes look at some solutions to some of the challenges you may be facing on a daily basis running an architectural practice. And of course, just to restate that the purpose of why we do this here at Business of Architecture is to help you as a practitioner in the field, have more of what we call the three F's, more freedom, more financial abundance and more fulfillment in the work that you do now. This coaching call that I just did earlier this week, this coaching call, on this call, there were 10 architects present, and each one of these architects were on the smaller side, so we had everything from a solo practitioner to a firm with about three people. So these are what we might call micro practices, a lot of them very new, and these architects were part of what is called our Rainmaker flow call. So in the Business of Architecture Framework, if you look at going from wherever you're at right now under practice to becoming what we call the free architect, an architect who has freedom, fulfillment and exceptional financial reward. There's a path and a step, many steps, to be able to get to there, and one of the steps is focusing on the rainmaking in your practice, getting to the point where you have a consistent and reliable source of inquiries that matches the caliber of the work and the clients that you aspire to work with. So that's what we do this. I do this call every single week, and that's the focus of this call is we're talking all about systems for business development. We're talking about growing your pipeline. We're talking about actual scripts for how to have conversations with potential referral partners. Marketing Strategies, websites, you name it, digital marketing, in person, marketing, face to face, marketing, all of the above, to build up that consistent source of leads in your practice, which is so important, because ultimately, if you don't have work coming in, then you won't be able to pay the bills. You'll constantly be in the feast or famine mode of wondering, with that anxiety and with that worry about the future and not being able to make powerful decisions today, maybe holding off on hiring someone because you're uncertain about the ability of your practice to have the work to keep that person gainfully employed in the future. So we can see that this idea of becoming a rainmaker, and particularly the content that I go over every single week with our heroic firm owners on the Rainmaker flow coaching call, is so essential. And so with that, I'm going to jump into this. This, this summary that was generated by these two wonderful AI hosts, and I'll pause it along the way and I'll give some commentary, but I'm going to use this as as fodder for this episode. And again, on this episode, you're going to discover, we're going to talk about working on the business, as opposed to working in the business. What does that actually mean? We're going to talk about, what do you do when you feel like team members aren't perhaps performing like you would like them to perform, and much else. So with that, let's jump into the content of today's episode. And one thing to keep in mind is, because the AI still has not progressed far enough to actually pronounce my name correctly, it refers to me as Mr. Sears. Apparently it can't pronounce Enoch, so we're gonna go with Mr. Sears. Whenever it talks about Mr. Sears, it's referring to me. And with that, let's jump into the summary of this coaching calling. Ever feel

Speaker 1

08:30

like you're constantly putting out fires in your business, like it's always urgent, you know? Oh, tell me about it. Yeah, it's easy to get stuck in that cycle, but lately, I've been thinking about this idea of working on the business, not just in it, you know, right? And you know, a listener actually sent in this recording of an architect consultant, Mr. Sears, doing a coaching call. Oh, cool. Yeah. That'd be perfect for a deep dive. Makes sense. Lot to unpack there, I bet, definitely, I think this is going to be eye opening for all of us, yeah, that

Speaker 2

09:01

on versus in thing. People get tripped up on it, right? Sounds simple at first. It does. Even in the recording, those practice owners were like, wait, what? Mr. Sears even said he used to struggle with it, really, yeah, it's like, okay, work on it, not just in it, but then what? What does that even look like, like in practice? Yeah, exactly like day to day. What are you actually doing differently, right? That's the million dollar question. Totally use of this analogy. It's like, are you on top of the business, or are you inside? Okay, I'm

Enoch Sears

09:28

gonna pause just there for a second. So indeed, I it is kind of humorous listening back to this about how the AI has worded the summary. But there are some great nuggets here. And one of the things that it talks about here is the idea of, what does it actually mean? Like, what does it really mean to work on the business and not in the business? And how much time should you spend working so called on the businesses, not in the business? So you say it goes, it goes much beyond just the idea of it can you work on the business so much that it prevents the business from actually moving forward? Absolutely? Absolutely. So I don't think they actually define it here later, but what I'll say is the way we define working on the business is that consider that your business, business is an asset. It's an entity. It's a thing. It has a life of its own, and as such, when you work on the business, you're creating systems, processes, mindsets, disciplines, ways of doing things that routinize the routine. In other words, instead of having to, let's say you lived on a farm property, and every single day, you had to go down to the river to pick up water to water your plants, that would get very tedious after a while. So eventually, what you want to do is you want to put into place an irrigation system that brings the water to the farm. You save the time of doing that again and again and again and again. So working on the business can relate to a number of things. It can relate to your processes, your systems, your QA systems. But here's one part that oftentimes we overlook when we're thinking about working on the business. The most important thing you can work on the business on is working on yourself, working on your own mindsets, working on your own habits, working on your own communication. So with that frame, let's jump back over here and see what our hosts have to say about this particular call.

Speaker 2

11:13

I like that. So being in the business, that's the craft, right? The design clients, projects,

Unknown Speaker

11:20

all that, yeah, the stuff you actually went to school for, exactly.

Speaker 2

11:23

But being on the business, that's everything else, how it runs money services, you get clients, all the strategic stuff. And

Speaker 1

11:31

that's where it gets tricky for a lot of us. I think, I mean, we love the creative side, right? That's why we got into this field,

Speaker 2

11:37

right? Problem solving, making things beautiful, yeah, but then there's this whole

Speaker 1

11:41

other side, the business side, which maybe we weren't totally prepared for. I

Speaker 2

11:46

think that's spot on. That's exactly what this Mr. Sears is getting at in this coaching call. It's like, you're not just an architect anymore. You're a business owner too, exactly. And that's a whole other ball game, new challenges, new responsibilities.

Speaker 1

11:59

And he was really hammering on that point about money. Yeah? Like, it's not just about the art. You got to master the money part too.

Speaker 2

12:05

Yeah, that's a big one. And for a lot of us creative types, that's a hard pill to

Speaker 1

12:09

swallow. Make you feel overwhelming all that stuff, payroll taxes, profit margin, absolutely.

Speaker 2

12:15

And Mr. Sears breaks it down, right? He says there are basically 220, things any business manages money and services, okay? And to be successful, you gotta master both. He says,

Speaker 1

12:27

interesting, though. I bet some of our listeners are like, profit. Isn't that? Like, greedy? Yeah, you got into architecture to design, you know, not just to make a buck, right? There's

Speaker 2

12:38

that tension for sure. And Mr. Sears tackles it head on. He actually reframes profit like it's risk mitigation. Remember, you're the safety net for your business.

Speaker 1

12:47

Oh, right. If it all goes south, your personal money is on the line exactly. So

Enoch Sears

12:51

let me, let me inject here. This is something that oftentimes, you know, when we were employees, I want you to consider maybe perhaps you are an employee now, or when you were employed a lot of times, we're not business owners. We don't think about profit as being a mitigator, as they say here, for for risk. Oftentimes, we look at profit as being, oh, well, that's just so you can get rich or so you can get paid more money. And it just, it's a money equation in our mind. Oftentimes, that could be a way that we look at this. But what happens when we actually flip the frame and we understand that a profit is not just about you taking home more money in your business, but it's also, and perhaps more importantly, about mitigating the risk. It's about reducing the risk. It's about giving you a foundation. Because let's face it, if your expenses exceed your income, where's that money going to come from. Who's gonna fund the business? That's you, and so the profit is what provides a buffer between your expenses and what your income is, right and what you actually need to run the business. Because if it so happens that your expenses, of course, exceed the money that's coming in, you can end up putting money back in the business, and as many small firm owners have to do occasionally, it's okay to tolerate this once or twice, but to do it consistently or repeatedly gets annoying and eventually can get very disillusioned. Cause a lot of disillusionment when we feel like we're working so hard and our business, we just feel like we should be earning more for all of our hard work,

Speaker 2

14:21

profit. It's a buffer, a safety net. That's a different way to think about it, right? It's not about like getting rich. It's about building a sustainable business that can actually, you know, and survive.

Enoch Sears

14:32

Interject as well. It could also be about getting rich. Nothing wrong with that,

Unknown Speaker

14:36

right? Whether the storms

Speaker 2

14:37

exactly, and he said, there's a psychological impact, too. When you feel secure financially, it helps you make better decisions, pricing, clients, all of it, it's less stressful, too. I bet way less stressful. You can actually enjoy the creative side. So

Speaker 1

14:52

it's not about being greedy, it's about having a strong foundation so you can thrive creatively and financially long term. That's

Speaker 2

14:58

it. The long term. He even compared it to investing like stocks have risk and reward businesses do too. That's a good point. And the more you get that financial side, the better decisions you can make totally

Speaker 1

15:10

now, to really hammer home this whole working on the business thing, he brings in this concept from Stephen Covey, that seven habits book, oh

Speaker 2

15:19

yeah, the importance, urgency grid. I love that thing. Ever used it? Oh yeah, all the time, classic for prioritizing your time, energy, super relevant for this whole on the business thing, right?

Speaker 1

15:30

So you've got the four quadrants, important, urgent, all that. But the one he really focuses on is that important, not urgent one.

Speaker 2

15:37

That's the tricky one, right? That's where all the long term strategic stuff, lives, things like business development, marketing, planning, all the things that don't have an immediate deadline. Yeah, and

Speaker 1

15:47

they're the first to go. When you're in firefighting mode, 100% it's like you've got this vision, but you get sucked into the day to day. Client calls, deadlines, emergencies, all the emergencies.

Speaker 2

15:59

He actually told this story about a contractor calling him freaking out because a bean was in the wrong place. Oh,

Speaker 1

16:07

my God, I can only imagine urgent, definitely important, debatable, right? And

Speaker 2

16:12

that's what's so great about that grid. It forces you to step back and ask, is this actually moving my business forward, right? Am

Speaker 1

16:19

I spending time on the things that really matter, or just okay? I think

Enoch Sears

16:22

that's a great point. I'm gonna pause right there. Am I spending time on the things that really matter, or just the loud things want you to consider that in your architectural practice, what keeps you from being able to do your craft more earnestly or more effectively, or more inspirationally, or whatever it is you're seeking for in your in your practice, are going to be the lack of those things that are important, that take focus. So when we're constantly caught in this reactive mode where we're reacting to things, ultimately what's happening is we're letting our business run us, instead of us running our business. So let's go back and see what else they have here,

Speaker 2

17:07

exactly, and that's where a lot of architects trip up. Mr. Sears says they're stuck in that important, urgent stuff.

Speaker 1

17:14

So focused on the urgent, they miss the important. Yep, they're

Speaker 2

17:18

so busy working in the business, they never make time to work on it, which, in the

Unknown Speaker

17:22

long run, that's what holds

Enoch Sears

17:23

them back. So I mean, what, what we're talking about here, this is not uncommon focusing on the things that are perhaps important and urgent, or even the things that are not important and urgent. Like it's very, very common that if we're going through our day unconsciously, that a lot of our time will be spent doing these types of things. And this is why another framework we talk about here is so important, the what I call the awareness framework. Number one, becoming aware. After we become aware, then we understand that we can then become activated in that area. And after we're activated, we move from being asleep into actually being awake in this area. So everything starts with awareness. Now, this is actually a very powerful principle, if you consider it, I would have you consider me. You might disagree, but consider that becoming aware is very, very simple, and that's the impetus of every single change that you want to see in your architectural practice. Now, unfortunately, there's a couple things that keep us from becoming more aware. Number one, we're so busy and we're worried about what we'll see when we become aware, so we kind of want to avoid the bad news. Or, number two, we're just worried that, hey, look, I kind of understand that things aren't working exactly where I want them to, and I'm afraid that if I or I worry about the idea that if I see what's actually happening, then I won't be able to do anything about it anyway, so I might as well just continue on with what I'm doing now, feeling like I'm trying to keep my head above water in this raging river. So let's, let's go back and see what our commentaries have to say break out of that cycle. I mean, he talks about habits, right? What habits does he say are key?

Speaker 2

18:57

One of the big ones is like cultivating that rain maker mindset. Don't tell me I gotta be like all salesy now. Oh no, no, no. It's not about that. More about consistently doing these things. He calls them abundance activities, okay?

Speaker 1

19:10

Abundance activities. I'm listening, but you gotta break that down. For me,

Speaker 2

19:13

it's basically anything that, like, nurtures your network, keeps you visible, you know, to potential clients, generates those new leads.

Speaker 1

19:21

Gotcha. So what does that look like in reality? No, it could be tons of

Speaker 2

19:25

stuff, going to those industry events, giving presentations, writing articles, social media, even, or even, like just having coffee with someone you admire in the field.

Speaker 1

19:34

So it's less about chasing projects and more about like, creating a flow Exactly. It's

Speaker 2

19:39

about that shift from scarcity to abundance, and part of that is really understanding your value, you know, being able to articulate it

Speaker 1

19:47

makes sense, though, I'm gonna be honest, finding the time for all that when you're already swamped with client work. Okay,

Enoch Sears

19:54

so I'm gonna pause there. These AI people are pretty damn smart. So. It is the challenge, right? That is the challenge of finding the time for these things, and that's why I consider that one of the most important things you can do in your business is how you decide to spend your time. There was once a quote that I heard from Warren Buffett that he would often tell his colleagues and people he worked with. He said the CEO or leader of a business is responsible primarily for asset allocation. That's just a fancy way to say that. Consider that you, as a business owner, you have a limited time of you have a limited amount of time, energy and money. Now, if I took a sample size of 10 architects, some of them work more, some of them work less, but even, let's say, even if you're burning them in that oil, you're spending as much time as you can possibly working. You still have a limited amount of time, energy and money. And so we begin to see that the biggest gains that you can have in your effectiveness. Notice, I didn't say efficiency in your effectiveness is not getting more things done is not working more, because you'll always reach your wall with that. But consider that it has to do with choosing what you actually work on,

Speaker 2

21:08

right? And that's where the whole working on the business thing comes in. You have to make time, even if it means saying no to a project sometimes, or delegating more,

Speaker 1

21:18

prioritizing the long term, even when the short term, feels like it's on fire 100%

Speaker 2

21:23

now he also brings in this visual. It's called the pit to peak diagram. It basically maps out these different stages of growth for architects as they build their business. So starting in the pit,

Speaker 1

21:34

I'm guessing that's where a lot of us are right now, feeling overwhelmed, probably

Unknown Speaker

21:37

stuck in the grind

Enoch Sears

21:40

and the first move on. And we'll explain a little bit about what what we mean here by pit to peak. This is a framework that we use when we coach our clients here Business of Architecture, and I use it in my own life, but it applies to every single area in which you want to achieve something that you're not currently getting. So the pit to peak framework is simply a way to look at here's the current state of where you currently are. Here's the current here's the desired future state of where you want to get to. So pit doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. Peak doesn't necessarily mean it's good, because you can see that in every single area of life, no matter where you're at, there's always going to be a further or a more beyond or something greater beyond where you are right now. And so that's why we call it pit to peak. So your pit could be the pit of goodness. You could be like, hey, everything's good. I'm comfortable right now. And then the peak could be, what is the next level of greatness look like. Or your pit could be, you know, I'm really struggling right now financially, barely making ends meet. And for me, the peak might just be, actually just getting by, being able to break even, you see. So when we look at this idea of pit to peak, remove from your mind the idea that the pit is bad and the peak is good. It's not about bad or good. It's about where am I currently at, right now? Where do I want to be? And creating the distance or the gap between these two things that then we can fill in with the path, the steps, the mindsets, the coaching, everything needed to get from point A to point B. So let's jump back in out

Speaker 2

23:02

of that pit is becoming that rain maker. That's where all those abundance activities come in.

Speaker 1

23:07

So you master getting those clients the steady flow of work, yep. And then from rain maker, you move on to trim tab. Trim tab. Wait, what was

Speaker 2

23:15

that? You know, that little tab on a ship's rudder, it's tiny, but it controls the whole direction of the

Speaker 1

23:20

vessel. Oh, yeah, yeah. So you become the trim tab of your business, meaning you build a team

Speaker 2

23:24

that can actually run without you needing to micromanage everything. So you can finally step back a bit exactly, focus on the important stuff, the long term vision, you

Unknown Speaker

23:34

know, and that frees you up to work on the business.

Speaker 2

23:35

Bingo. And then finally, you hit the peak the Design Council

Unknown Speaker

23:41

sounds fancy.

Speaker 2

23:42

What's it take to get there? Well, it's a whole other level at that point. It's about strategic leadership, building a really strong company culture, making a real impact.

Speaker 1

23:51

So it's bigger than just like running a business, way bigger. It's leaving a legacy.

Enoch Sears

23:56

Now, what they talked about there were different levels that we have within smart practice. So we have Rainmaker, which is all about a firm owner making the shift from just an architect to being able to be the person in the business that can make it rain, right rain or shine. Desert conditions, tsunamis, tornado conditions. You have the ability, the mindset, the discipline. You know you have what it takes, and you have the skill sets to go out and to get work, and not just any work, but get great quality projects, premium fees, high paying work for the kind of challenging, interesting work that you want to do, that that that matches the caliber of clients and products that you want to work with after that, after you master that, then the next, what we call identity shift, or the identity to take on, is what we call become the trim tab of your business. They did a good job of explaining that. And then after that is Design Council, which is certainly not the peak, but it's beginning to move into abundance. This is our highest level group of firm owners who we work with to help them solve many of the issues that they just mentioned here in this little summary.

Speaker 2

24:59

Okay. Abstract, but Mr. Sears really grounds it with real stories, you know, from his own experience and the people he's coached. Ah, so it's not just theory, Nope, not at all. And there's this one story I think it really ties it all together. You remember Patel? Patel, yeah,

Speaker 1

25:15

the architect who had that, like, crazy specific plan for getting new clients. Oh,

Speaker 2

25:20

yeah, she's awesome. Her approach is like textbook, turn aspirations into action. No

Speaker 1

25:25

kidding, 10 cold calls every week, updating your spreadsheet, like religiously. She's serious. It's the opposite

Speaker 2

25:31

of those vague goals we all have, right? Get more clients. Grow my business. Patel gets it specificity. That's what breeds action.

Speaker 1

25:38

Yeah, and she's holding herself accountable, tracking your progress, all of that, I think we could all learn something from Patel for sure.

Speaker 2

25:45

Now, her plan might seem intense, but the principle is, what matters you break down your goals right into small steps, and then you actually do the steps, even when it's uncomfortable. It's that active mindset, yes, yeah, you're making it happen, not just hoping for it. Now another architect in the group, Eric, he had a totally different situation.

Speaker 1

26:07

Oh, Eric, right, he was having a tough time with a new hire, a new designer. Yeah, and

Speaker 2

26:12

it's something we can all relate to. You know, you hire someone all excited, and then it's not what you expected. Happens all the time. And Eric's situation, it highlights this point Mr. Sears makes about testing skills before you hire someone. He wasn't

Speaker 1

26:26

just talking design skills either, right? It was like problem solving, communication, all that, the whole

Speaker 2

26:30

package. It's about setting yourself and your team up to actually succeed. Sounds like Eric might have skipped that step. It happens, and now he's potentially looking at a long, hard training process, if the skill gap is too big, that is. So

Unknown Speaker

26:43

what did Mr. Sears say?

Enoch Sears

26:46

Before we jump into what Mr. Sears said he should do, let's clarify what they're talking about here. So this is, this is a common situation with any small practice, you've you've hired someone, you've taken the step, made that first hire, made that second higher, and then you're discovering that, well, you know what they're and this is requiring more time and energy than I thought it would have. Maybe this team member isn't living up to what I would hope they would live up to in terms of their performance and my expectations. So now this puts you in an awkward position. So the situation that we're talking about, that we talked about on this call with Eric, is certainly not the exception to the rule. This is the rule when it comes to small architectural practices, because typically, as small firm owners, you're going to be driven by hiring someone who you can afford instead of hiring the right person for the role and then making the money to be able to afford that person. Okay, so let's jump back over here to see how this situation with Eric played out. He said,

Speaker 2

27:42

set a deadline, 30 days, and be really clear about what you expect, and if she's not there by then, let her go. Yeah, I know, tough call, but sometimes it's necessary. You got to recognize when something's not working right and be brave enough to make a change.

Unknown Speaker

27:57

It's like they say wrong team. What

Enoch Sears

27:59

they're referring to there is as I as I dug into the conversation with Eric, I realized that Eric wasn't really quite sure how to judge if this employee actually was aligning with what he needed this person to do. And I said, no worries. No big deal. This is typical. It's not uncommon to for people to hire people and not have a clear idea of what the job role is that they actually want them to do. And the problem with that is, when you're not clear about what it is that you want them to do, or you haven't really clearly delineated and outlined the requirements that are a success for this particular role, then you have no way to determine if the person succeeding in the role only your feelings, maybe feelings of frustration, maybe wondering, scratching their head, why they're not performing at a higher level. So what we do is we focus instead on taking the emotions out of it. While emotions are important, we set up, okay, what are the criteria that this that this person needs to absolutely check to be able to succeed in this role? And then we say, I'm going to measure them. I'm going to observe them over a 30 day period or a 60 day period or a 90 day period to test them and see, do they have these qualities and attributes? If they don't, we need to move them to another role in the business that is a match for them. Or if we don't have another role, then we need to let them go, because that is the right thing to do. One of the worst things to do as a business owner is to keep someone on on longer than you need to someone who isn't currently a fit. It's not good for either party,

Speaker 2

29:23

exactly. And Eric's story also brings up something else that's important communication. He actually admitted he might not be super clear with the new designer about his expectations. Ooh,

Speaker 1

29:33

that's a big one. Isn't that one of the hardest parts of working on the business? You know, it's not just the strategy, it's those everyday leadership skills, how you communicate, delegate, give feedback. Couldn't

Speaker 2

29:45

agree more. Mr. Sears was really emphasizing that how good communication makes or breaks a team. As the leader, you're not just doing your own work anymore. You're guiding people.

Enoch Sears

29:55

Let me interject here. You've probably had employees. In the past or bosses, and you've seen different levels of ability in terms of giving feedback to employees. Ideally, a good leader can give corrective feedback to an employee without making that employee feel bad, in other words, helping that employee feel cared for, feel safe and feel empowered. So as you can see business, especially when it goes to you, starting to lead teams is not just about spreadsheets. It's not just about systems and not just about invoices and finances. It actually is much more about your abilities as a human being to relate to others and to inspire them and help them to achieve their best. So this is the part where we get into the soft skills that can be very elusive. And frankly, no one teaches us these skills, and very few of us actually have these skills innately, which is why it is so important to get training, to get coaching and mentoring in these areas. All right, let's, let's head on back, see what they have to say. Where are we at?

Unknown Speaker

31:05

Is a whole different skill set, totally different.

Speaker 2

31:07

It's not just about drawing plans. It's about like articulating your vision, giving feedback that's actually helpful, creating a space where people feel safe to

Speaker 1

31:17

talk, which all takes time, right? Which is, of course, the one thing Eric feels like he doesn't have. But isn't that the whole point of this whole working on the business thing? You put the time in now to build that foundation, the systems,

Speaker 2

31:29

the good communication habits, all of it pays off later, less stress, less firefighting. Consider that

Enoch Sears

31:37

one of the aspects of a toxic culture versus a healthy culture in a small architectural practice is the safety that people feel to be able to voice their concerns. Now, as human beings, all of us have complaints. All of us are going to have complaints about our team members. We're going to have complaints about our spouses or romantic partners, about our kids, about politicians, about the weather, and the list goes on and on and on and on and on. So the same thing is going to happen in a business, but more important than eradicating those complaints is actually creating the atmosphere within your business where there is an element of safety, where people can actually express themselves and say what's true for them, without any fear or worry of recrimination or without a fear of worry that revealing these true feelings and thoughts that they're having is going to negatively impact their career. This is often the case in many small architectural practices where no one's ever taught you as a leader how to create that safe environment. And as a matter of fact, you may think that you have it, when, in reality, if someone was to come in and interview your your team members, it actually doesn't exist. So what we generally find is that when you understand how to create a safe environment where people can express exactly what is true for them, then people naturally move into higher levels of performance. So that's what they're talking about right here. As we talk about creating a safe environment, that just means that people feel comfortable talking about their own personal truth, honesty, the honest truth about what's happening for them individually.

Speaker 1

33:02

This is where it gets even more interesting, because Mr. Sears, he starts digging deeper. And it turns out Eric's project manager, the one who recommended the designer, she's having her own issues too. Oh, a ripple effect. So it wasn't just a one off hiring problem. It's like the whole dynamic is a bit off. It's a

Speaker 2

33:21

system, right? The business is a system, and if one part's not working, it throws the whole thing off. This is why working on it is so important. It makes you think about that butterfly effect, right? Totally. And so all those important, not urgent, things we were talking about before, making roles clear, better communication, expectations, all that. It's not just theory. It affects everything,

Speaker 1

33:40

right, right? And that's exactly what Mr. Sears was telling Eric. He said, building a business, it's a journey. You're always learning, adapting, refining. There's no finish line, really? Nope.

Speaker 2

33:51

You got to embrace the messiness, the challenges, even how you grow, and you don't have

Enoch Sears

33:56

to do it alone either. I'm going to pose a question for you here, now that you're listening to this or watching this video, when do you know when is the right time to focus on which aspects of your business? Because here we're talking about working on the business or not on the business. When you actually know? When do you know when is the right time to work on a certain area of your business? How do you know when is the right time to update your website versus the right time to implement some sort of new recruiting system, or a way to have some sort of review system for your employees. Okay, so that is the key as to why running a business can be so challenging. And if you're feeling like you're feeling lost, you're feeling exasperated or frustrated or even disillusioned or just wondering why it isn't easier, that's why it isn't easier, because the challenge is not necessarily knowing what to do, although that can be a challenge, even more importantly than that, is knowing when to do it and what resources to allocate to it. Find

Speaker 1

34:52

those mentors, get into a community, invest in resources that can actually help.

Enoch Sears

34:56

There's a great little pitch for what we do here at Business of Architecture. With Smart practice, and certainly, you know, getting a being a part of a community, getting mentors, is so essential. Because let me ask you, how else are you going to pick up these skills? Do you want to spend the next 20 years inventing them, trying to figure them out, reading books and practicing on your own in a bubble? Or do you want to get feedback, directive feedback that helps you become the kind of leader that can have the practice, that has the the ability to have the freedom that you want to have

Unknown Speaker

35:26

solidarity, baby. I love that

Speaker 1

35:28

so big takeaway here, working on the business is a lifelong thing. It's about stepping back, seeing that big picture, and then actually taking action to build the business and the life that you really want perfectly

Speaker 2

35:43

said. And look, you don't gotta do it all at once. Pick one little thing, something you can actually measure, and do it this week. Maybe it's an hour on your calendar for those abundance activities. Or, you know, finally, having that tough conversation you've been putting off, just start moving. And

Speaker 1

35:57

that's what we want you to do too. Tell us what really stuck with you from this coaching call, share your thoughts, your questions, keep this conversation going. Who knows? Maybe you'll be sharing your own picked up

Enoch Sears

36:06

right there. There's a little bit more that the summary goes into, but I think that's a good place to wrap. We've covered a lot today. We've talked about, you know, some of the challenges that communication poses when running any sort of business or being part of a team, right? I remember back in school when I was part of school projects, and I remember I used to hate being on teams or groups, doing group work with other students. You may have experienced this as well, because as a, you know, self proclaimed top performing student, I, you know, oftentimes I was stuck in this difficult place of like, well, do I shoulder the line? Show the work. I don't want to get a bad grade because someone's not pulling their weight like there's a real art to being able to work together as a team, and I dislike doing that back in the day, when I was working on these group projects in school. Well, consider that if you're a business owner, you run an architectural practice, if you don't want to just be a solo architect for the rest of your life and be limited in that regard, then it's really going to be about having these group projects, right? It's going to be able to, it's and one of the most beautiful parts about this, that is beautiful and is a positive note, is that up leveling your skills to work in groups, in other words, to work as a team, is a journey that has no summit. It has no peak. You can never max out your ability to inspire, to lead, to hold people accountable, to be able to ascertain and discern who are the right team members, for which positions like this is something that goes on and on forever, which is a great I'm glad that they made that point there, and it reminds me, for those of you who are science fiction nerds like I am, and especially Brandon Sanderson fans, one of the values of the Knights Radiant was journey before destination. And the idea there is, in modern parlance, the way we talk about it is, hey, look, it's not about getting to the destination. Yes, eventually we want to get to the destination, but that's not it. Life is about the experience along the way. And are you having fun along the way? Because we can get to the destination, and then what we get to the destination, and then there's some further destination after that. So a very frustrating way and soul crushing way to pursue the game of business is to constantly be trying to get to some destination. Yes, we need to set targets. Yes, we should have goals, but these goals are there to orient us. And after we've been oriented, then we show up every day, we adjust the plan, and we make sure that we're doing the things that excite us so we can have fun on a daily basis. So that's a wrap for today's episode, as always, looking for your feedback. Do you like these episodes? You know, this is something new that we've been playing around with as we're discovering these AI tools that are just, I mean, they're blowing our minds here in the consulting work we do with firms. I know it's impacting you in terms of the work you do, or maybe there's just so many unknowns because this is progressing so quickly. But we would like to get some feedback on this new format. Not every episode will be like this, but we thought this might be a nice way to spice up some of the episodes. Give you some a little bit of variety, beyond an interview or beyond a conversation between Ryan and myself actually diving into a deep dive conversation about one of the coaching calls behind the scenes here at Business of Architecture. Now, before we end up this. This, this episode as a reminder, if you haven't already gotten access to our free 60 minute firm owner master class that is available to completely free over at Business of architecture.com and in that master class, I talk about some of the the top four challenges that plague small architectural practices, so you can see if these are the same challenges that you're facing, and then we talk about the solutions to those particular challenges. Now, again, you can get free access to that by heading over to Business of architecture.com there's a big button right there on the front page that says free training. Or to make it even easier on you, so you have less things to click on, just go to. Smart practice method.com, that's it for today. As always. Carpe Diem and goodbye for now. And thank you. For those of you who recently left a review on Apple podcast for the Business of Architecture podcast, as you know, this is how people are able to find the Business of Architecture podcast. And ultimately, we all raise the tide of all the boats. So big. Shout out, and thanks to Mark Benner. BT, McHugh, Luisa, Manfredini, Rocky, LSA, Abe net. GM, SM, 405. Tired girl, 622. I would say to you, get some sleep. Mr. Jazz pants. Dad mocked arch architect at heart 90 9d teager and head down and moving forward as well as Andrew R, H, A, thank you for leaving the reviews for the Business of Architecture podcast. Hello listeners.

Rion Willard

40:53

We hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it about 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@businessfarchitecture.com

Enoch Sears

41:16

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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