We're just not architects who can sit in a closet and wait for the work to matriculate in.
Hello, and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I am your host Ryan Willard. And today I have the fabulous privilege of introducing Jeff frame who is one of our Design Council members here at Business of Architecture. And this episode was actually recorded in a deep dive session we had with all of our business architecture, clientele. And Jeff goes into a lot of detail in to the fiercely competitive arena of architecture, where as we know, professionals frequently wrestle with the dual challenge of not merely securing projects but bringing them to fruition. This endeavor can be as intricate as the blueprints that are often created and the battle to differentiate oneself in a saturated market is consistently compels architects to seek out inventive strategies that will guarantee both their endurance and their latest field. So today, we look at Jeff, who as an architect has some unorthodox strategies and some interesting ways of gaining and procuring work. Jeff weaves a very compelling tale of integrating philanthropic endeavors with strategic networking. He reveals how combining professional acumen with a passion for the community can catalyze both business growth and societal impact. His narrative is a veritable masterclass in how to navigate the intricate dance of high stakes business with finesse and a commitment to social good. This episode is a call to the curious and a promise of insights equipped to empower you to carve a niche through the power of giving and building sincere relationships. Explore in this episode, Jeff's ingenious tactic that transforms community events into veritable opportunity hubs. Learn the unspoken dialogue technique that could revolutionize your own networking approach, uncover a counter intuitive strategy that might just alter your perspective on marketing, and investment and discover the one traditional tool Jeff champions for cultivating genuine connections often overlooked, yet exceedingly effective. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Jeff on this and his presentation to the group was absolutely fantastic. There's plenty of dialogue here, there's a q&a and bear that in mind that this was taken from a live event. So sit back, relax and enjoy the fabulous Jeff frame. And now
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It is my great pleasure to introduce Mr. Jeff frame please everyone give him a big VOA welcome look at this this is this is a sell out event. This is like this is like this the sphere in Las Vegas. So very, very exciting. Because today we're going to have Jeff's secret handbook, opening and closing projects with filthy rich clients. Yeah.
Well, you gotta, you gotta find them first.
That's what we're that's what we've come from. That's what we've come. You got
to you got to know where we are. So to find
to finding and closing Shall we call that ending and closing
so you know, I will step back a little ways to to that lovely economic event in 2008 that we had. Yeah, we all still have few of us on here still have our scars from it. And you know, I was in the spring of 2008. We were a small firm of like, while there was five of us, including myself in the spring. By Labor Day I was down to myself. So that's like an 80% drop in Everything, employment revenues, everything, and I can remember going to the state of Nevada here. And I knew the one of the project management's over there, and I just asked him, I said, You got anything, anything at all, you know, I don't care what it is. And they gave me a bunch of roof replacement projects, which, you know, they're not glamorous, and they're not going to make the website, but they paid the bills for, for about two and a half to three years, at least, just to keep myself afloat, and, you know, keep everything going. And it was that time that realize that, hey, everything had come on round for, you know, as we all experienced, is like, I gotta rethink this thing. And, you know, after, you know, I'd only been in business myself, right then for now for about five years, and you know, and it was just starting to grow, and then off the cliff, we won't. And so I thought, well, when we come out of this, because academically, we always will, it's like, I gotta, I gotta rethink and re, you know, just refocus and come up with other ways to, you know, spread the client base out a little bit. And so I started just slowly, you know, in between doing, everything's like formulating, like, Okay, where are the people who actually make the decision? Before
you go into that? What was it about the 2008 event that had such a significant impact on your particular client base? Was it because you'd, you've had lots of clients in the same all in the same kind of logic typology.
We had lots of we had lots of residential clients. You know, I would say our work was predominantly like, 80%, residential, and maybe about 20% commercial. And so when the residential market came to a screeching halt, whether it be single family, or multifamily, or whatever, it just, you know, it rippled through the whole economy, as we know, so we, you know, and not only that we, what really did it, the day I lost my last employee, we had three commercial projects in the office, and he and I were doing all three of them. In one day, they all called me and said, we're putting our project on an indefinite hold. And so in one day, all my commercial work was done. And I was just like, I literally had like, next to nothing. And we had an open office. And it was just he and I sitting in one big room, and he kind of looked at me after that third phone call went, Well, I guess I know what the next conversation is. I said, Yeah. And he left, you know, and you all know, what happens is when you start losing work, and you start cutting staff, you hold on to your best employees, till the very bitter end. And he was, you know, he, man, he was good. And he went to, he ended up going up to the Pacific Northwest Portland Area, and got a job with a firm up there. But anyway, it just, you know, when I was sitting in that office, by myself going, like, what the heck am I going to do, you know, realizing that I can't put all my efforts into one market segment, I got to gotta diversify here. And so we we had never really, really procured any, any state projects. We were too small, not enough experience, and decided to you know, that's when I just, like I said, I called one of the project managers there and asked him for anything, really, because I knew they had some direct select stuff, I was just in panic mode, just trying to keep, I just tried to keep you know, keep the roof over, over over my family's head at that time. So it was tough. So we started coming out of it. And it started picking up a little bit, I tried the typical, you know, I'm gonna say typical marketing strategies to different segments, you know, whether they'd be phone calls, or emails or flyers or whatnot, and just couldn't get past the gatekeeper. Or the flyers probably got tossed in the trash or, you know, we really didn't have didn't really have a strategy of, you know, where were these high net worth individuals, I knew who they were, just how do we get to meet them? How do we get to, you know, how do we get to converse with them just a little bit, and it was just a while I couldn't get around. I didn't I didn't run in that economic, you know, status with them. And so it just, it got to be it got to be a little frustrating and depressing is like, what do we you know, what are we doing here and then you start thinking about okay, put that aside for a second. I'm starting over and I'm literally by myself, you know, there for a couple of years I'd hire a person to help on a job I mean, a few months later, let him you know, let them go and whatnot, which I hate to do. But, you know, like, Okay, what, what do I want frame architecture to be? Well, how can we get this firm to get some presents? How do we get out there in the community to where we're known and unknown entity, and that's really where the focus started shifting as like, Okay. I really had to rethink this for a second and for a long time, and just, you know, where, where do I want us to be, and where, you know, and come up with a game plan of just how do we try to get in with, with all these, you know, these just different decision makers, because we weren't getting I was getting nowhere. And even when I would get somewhere, like, I'd be able to talk to them, they could see right through it, I'm, I'm a single person, how you going to handle a large project, if it's just you, you know, and you could tell them, I could tell them all I want? Well, you know, I'm teaming up with so and so or so I've got, you know, resources here and there. And they were kind of seeing right through the veil there, and it just wasn't getting, we just weren't getting anything, you know, and in fact, once we came out, I'd say around 2011 or so I, I all of a sudden started falling back into the same type of work. That was in 2006. And 2007. You know, and, and to be honest with you, I started to get busy again, and I started getting somewhat comfortable. And I was like, wait a minute, I can't, I can't do this again. Because I've come time again, where, you know, it's going to how are
you? How are you winning those those projects before 2008, those residential projects,
it was just word of mouth with, we were getting it from I knew a couple of residential Builders here in town, and we were getting, you know, we were getting production work from them, I don't really like doing that, because it's you can't make any money on it, they grind you down to the bottom, you know, and we were a lot of the commercial Realtors were referring us referring me for work. But again, it was the scale for a small firm, for a one or two person firm, it wasn't anything of substance or anything of, of size, and it was just not, we just weren't, you know, we just weren't making that that huge step. You know, we joined some trade organizations, but those didn't really help, you know, they, they really were in a couple of trade organizations right now, it helps for, you know, helps for health insurance costs and benefits and all that, but it doesn't really, you know, it doesn't really help for work in that in that regard. So we were kind of just, you know, we're still kind of stumbling along, you know, it's not going where this was about, you know, 1011 12 2012 2013 You know, and it took us a long time to come out of 2008 is a lot of you can remember it, we kind of stumbled along the bottom for a long time. So, we just started, I started realizing that, you know, there's this large, I'm gonna call it fill in philanthropic, you know, community out there, where in everybody's got, you know, there's organizations out there and that, you know, they have supporters, you always hear about, you know, you know, foundations and whatnot, supporting, you know, local, local causes and local charities, and then kind of started digging in a little bit more, it's like, okay, how do we, how do we get in there? How do we, you know, how do we help them out, and they'd always have events and stuff. And every once a while, I had to attend some sort of fundraising event, but really still not. I mean, you're in the room, but you're not, you're kind of on the outskirts of the room, you're barely in, you know, you're barely, barely making an introduction, if you will, and really wasn't getting still wasn't getting the results. You know, it's, like I said, you're in the room, but you're in the room with 600 people. So you're, you're kind of lost, you know, nobody really knows who you are, you're trying to, you know, you're trying to, you know, inch your way up to the to the you know, the high dollar tables, if you will, and you know, you just can't get there. So,
what were these philanthropic events, how did you and how did you identify them?
Um, you know, you look for, you know, stuff like, you know, we got an organization here, you know, kind of like the Food Bank of Northern Nevada, you know, feeds hungry families. You know, we got to another organization, the Reno Rodeo does a clothing drive and some other you know, some other charitable work, you know, and there's a there's an organization called the children's Cabinet who, who helps, you know, for children in a you know, unfortunate situation helps them out. There's a there's a couple other ones. Let's see food. Boys and Girls Club, which is a kind of a national thing. So they're all supported, you know, I hear about them. And I know that they're run based off donations, and they get grants and whatnot, but there's a lot of them that are based off donations. I mean, you'd see them, you know, you'd see where they get new facilities built, like, Well, how did it? How the heck did they do that? You know, it's like, they're, you know, and you realize that, okay, there's a couple, there's a couple of foundations around here that, you know, that tend to support them to support them, and you go, like, Alright, I need to talk to the people who are running those foundations, because that's who you need to get in front of, in order to be considered for, for something of, you know, of substance. And it's also good from a marketing standpoint you want to be associated with, for us, it was like, how do we create presence? And how do we build the culture of the firm, show that we're helping in the community becoming part of the overall general community, not just there to try to, you know, secure a project and secure, you know, secure commission, it's, it's, you're actually sincere in in, you know, spending some time and helping out, you know, members of the community. So, that was kind of the, you know, I wouldn't call it a real bold move, it's kind of a quiet, Sly move, if you will, in that, you know, these things were already in place, all's we had to do was step in and support, you know, and there's, there's the thought of, you know, Hey, we should have, you know, done our own event, or started our own charity, or, or all this, which, you know, that's pretty strong, bold move, but it's, it's like, Why, yeah, it's a lot of work. And why do it when, when everything's already in place, and all you have to do is step up to the plate, and, you know, helps them financially support him. And so that's kind of the avenue I took, yeah, like you said, right, it's a lot of work, we're really, you know, really wasn't ended to really starting from scratch, when somebody had already invented the wheel, why start over.
So you kind of after 2008, you're going through this period of rebuilding the practice, essentially, you recognize that you need to diversify your portfolio and kind of start making a vision where you're looking for the higher tier higher caliber kinds of projects that are going to be able to support the the office, then some of the first things that you've done, were take on some of these roof projects to kind of just keep the cash coming into the business. And you were doing this for for about seven years, kind of coming out of 2008 or so. 2014? Yeah, I
would say there was a good, a good three or four years, we were I flew all over the state of Nevada, and you know, the State's got a lot of buildings out in the middle of nowhere. And I, I measure the roof and do a roof plan and about four sheets of details, and they would deposit some money in my bank account.
So what I love about that is that there's it's unglamorous work right
now, oh, boy, is it ever unglamorous?
Yeah, but But it's but it was you were building something that you were building something you were, what were you doing financially at that point, with those kinds of projects.
At first, I was just surviving. But at first, it was just it was, it was sheer survival. But after a while, you know, I kind of got a system down to doing these things, and it was just me, and you could all of a sudden start distilling a little bit of profit off of them to help, you know, spend some time and some marketing efforts elsewhere.
So I think that's what's really that's what's really interesting because obviously, to be able to enter into playing the game of some of these high end philanthropic events, you've got to have some cash sitting aside to be able to invest in them. Yeah, and and this little part of actually, you know, what, it wasn't the most glamorous of of work but it was sensible, productive work that you could repeat and actually develop quite a nice workflow out build up some reserves, which then allows you to play the game of being a being more visible,
right. You know, and and that visibility came slowly you know, like you said, we we you don't make a lot of profit off those projects, but you make just enough so, right at first we would attend events, I would actually attend them by myself. So I would just buy one seat and they would put me at you know, just a general table usually in the back and it was I would meet seven or eight or nine new people but none of them they were all like me just trying to survive you know, we but it would kind of it helped there over those first two or three years of doing that of just like okay, kind of gave me the layout and made me realize Is that, hey, if you want to be seen, and you want to create a presence, it's got to be your name, it's got to be the person out there at the podium mentioning all the sponsors, they've got to mention frame architecture, how am I going to get there, and so, started off again, small, with myself, and then had a couple employees, and I would take as many as I could. Because these events don't happen during the day they happen, you know, they happen at night, they usually happen on a Friday night or a Saturday night, you know, and some of them are formal events. And so we start taking the employees and their spouses. And then, you know, we actually, I remember the first time we built up to actually buying one whole table, you know, it was kind of like this, this benchmark, you know, it was like, Alright, we got a whole table, and we got our name on the table sign, you know, and it's just like, again, no mention of us no swag, no, nothing, but at least we're least we're at a full table. And, you know, then, about four years ago, three, four years ago, it was like, alright, we need to have our name. As a main sponsor, that's how we're going to get that's how we're going to start getting some recognition. Who's
in this room, can you give us a bit of an idea of the sorts of specific people you don't have to mention names, but what they do their caliber, what kind of what kind of decision makers and we took,
so there was a, there was a gaming company here in town, they just recently sold to a European company company called International Game technology. Of course, here in Nevada, yeah, they make a lot of slot machines. They make if your state has a lottery, and you've got one of those vending machines, where you can go in your corner grocery store or something and buy a lottery ticket from a vending machine, chances are they made it, that was kind of actually actually their big mainstay for a while they made the chairs, if any of you watch the voice, their little singing show, right? The chairs that turned around, they actually make those right here in Reno, right here at their plant. So it's kind of so that company 100 million, hundreds of millions of dollars in value, the owner of that company would be in this that room, right? The owner of there's a couple of large master planned communities here in town, the developers, the the owners of the development company would be in that room, there'll be a lot of elected officials in those rooms, they always come out for a good cause, right? They can't, you know, they always want to get a, you know, a photo opportunity. So that's the kind of people that would be in there. That's the kind of people you want to talk to students
prospective clients, as well as, like political decision makers as well.
Yeah. And even the political decision makers, you want to be in front of, you know, you want to, I mean, it's tough to, you can call and say, hey, I want to talk to assembly person, or council person, or mayor or whatever, it's tough to get in their office during the day. It's, it's very difficult. They're busy, they're doing a, you know, they, they've got meetings, they've got whatever commitments and, you know, they're looking at you going like, well, who's Jeff frame? I don't know, no, give him to one of the lower staff people, and we'd always get, you know, we get a gatekeeper or something like that, and just, you know, it's tough to say, Hey, I just want to introduce myself, you know, you got a lot of people coming in, and, you know, we'd like to be considered and that just that just wasn't happening. You know, it just we just weren't getting in, just weren't getting in the, in the door there.
So once you've kind of started to buy the tables closer to the closer to the front, you've worked your way from the back row up to the up to the front row now over over time, then then what do you need to do in order to kind of start nurturing the relationships and turning some of these connections into into work.
If you're in the front, that means you've paid the money to get up front, that means your your name is kind of plastered all over, all over the room. And you know, and then you're starting to people recognize, you know, that they would recognize all of us. And then that kind of that what it does is it opens up the door just to have a kind of a an informal introduction and conversation and you're not really talking about projects or work or anything like that. It's kind of just just an informal, informal get together, you know, and that's really what I was trying to get at and again, then your company's being noticed as All right, you're really stepping up to support to support this kind of, you know, these kind of organizations. So It really helps to just, uh, you know, again, if you've got one of these people sitting at the table right next to you, it's easy to turn around, say, Hey, how you doing and introduce yourself and they see your name, and they're like, hey, you know, and it starts, you just want to get that conversation ball rolling with the right person.
Got it? And why is why are these events better? For example, than, say, a regular? I don't know. What what is it? What is it about this environment that makes the talking so much easier?
Well, I think first of all, you're there for a common cause you're there for a very good, you're there for a very good reason to support a charity that, you know, it's got a long standing presence and reputation in the community, you're there for, you know, you're you're there for a little bit different means than just the typical business call, and everybody's guard is down a little bit, you know, you're you're you're able to, you know, and you don't, you know, you don't come on with a strong sales tactic right away. It's, it's a simple, it's a simple, casual, hey, how you doing, how's how's things, how's, you know, how's business? Hey, great organization, you know, glad to see you guys are a part of it. And that's kind of a conversation just starts to roll and, you know, the, you know, hey, love to get together with you here in the next, you know, three, four weeks, you got a time on your calendar. And next thing, you know, the phone opens up and you There you go, you got yourself a meeting with whoever you know you want. But it It's everybody's guard is down, you're a little bit more reserved. We've you know, usually everybody there has been to bend to the, you know, the bourbon bar more than once or twice. So the guards really tapped a little bit, you know, and it's, yeah, you get the entertainment flowing. And, again, it's not formal, so much, you know, it's a little bit more of an informal gathering,
like a wedding. Kind of like,
yeah, somewhat. Brilliant. Yeah, you're just hoping you get the right person saying I do, right? I mean?
And do you have much choice of like, who you're sat next to, or how you can kind of curate Do you have a list of the people that are going to be attending it as well beforehand, so you can kind of strategic
Yeah, we do know who's who's going to attend. So when you when you sponsor, you get a whole table or a couple of these events, we get two tables. So we're able to bring everybody from our office and you know, and a guest. So it's kind of make it more of a company event, I'll invite, you know, in order to fill up the tables, I will invite some of my other clients. So I've got, you know, I've got like a, one of the vice presidents from one of the local hospitals here in town, I invite him and his wife and a local banker, him and his wife come along, you know, just to help, you know, sometimes we're short, a couple of seats, and we need to fill them up. And so invite some of your some of your existing clients along so they can see kind of what you support as well. So it kind of helps strengthen that relationship, you know, just to make it stronger. But you don't you do get you do know who, who the other main sponsors are, you know, who the other, there's different tiers of sponsorship and all these events. So, you know, you don't have to go all in at first, you know, you can, you can kind of do like we did, we kind of tiptoed in until all of a sudden, heck, we're in the deep end. And we, you know, we worked ourselves up to the deep end of the pool here, so, but you do know who the other you know who the other large sponsors are, and, you know, and you're sitting right next to him, you know, so it's easy, I can, I can turn around, and I'm talking to one of the owners of the major gaming properties or something like that here. So it does, you know, it does open up the doors a little bit.
I like the fact that you can bring existing clients as well. And that's quite nice, as you know, you've got living breathing testimonials, and you can demonstrate how good you are and not that people would necessarily, it's just, it looks good. Yeah, you've got your community there, you've got your people. It's very transparent. Yeah. And
I think it's important to bring, you know, to bring, you know, our employees, the people that I get to work with every day, you know, it's, it's, um, you know, it's, it's kind of asking a lot from them to, you know, after everybody's gone home for the day, I you know, I know what it's like we we've got family life and, you know, I just assumed, you know, sit in my backyard or something, then go out again, and you gotta kind of like, you know, put yourself back together again, and go out and make a somewhat, you know, marketing appearance and so, you know, but I think it's good for for everybody to see just the effort it takes and the sacrifice it takes, it's again, it's not it's just, you know, it's odd hours that these things happen, but it's, you know, it is it's, it's the opportunity and The Doors opening that the you know, we need to kind of push ourselves through. And you know, just for them to see. Yeah, for for everybody around me to see, you know what it takes, I mean, it's one thing to tell them in a staff meeting, hey, I went to this or I went to that they don't really, you know, it's not a whole lot of effect there, you know, for them to actually come along and see just the production that everybody puts on. And what we're supporting, I think is, I think it's important. And I hope it's beneficial to all of them.
I think that's very interesting as well just kind of just on that point of sacrifice, if you like, as a as a strategy or a principle, not that we have to sacrifice our lives in order to win into winning work. But winning work does come at a different kind of expense. And it does often mean doing something that's uncomfortable, there's always something uncomfortable about it, whether it's picking up the phone and making a connection with someone that you don't know, putting yourself into a scenario where you could be rejected, or doing something out of ours for you, or something, which is kind of out of regular sheduled for you just so that you can get in Connect, make connection with somebody that you that you don't know. Right,
right. So we do something just popped up in the chat box, we do. We do a few of these a year, we do two major ones a year, where we we are one of the main title sponsors on that. And then we pick a couple other were a little bit more of a minor sponsor on that, you know, you can't do them all. And obviously, it's, you know, we set a marketing budget at the beginning of every year and adhere to it. So we do keep the same one or two, we've kind of committed to a couple of them that we've done. And then we also Yeah, we do build a relationship with the organization. I mean, one in particular, the children's cabinet. This, you know, there's a how do I put this, there's a, there's kind of an emotional toll on my side, I gravitate towards the children's cabinet for a number of reasons. And so, you know, first of all, I love the just, I just love their mission. I love the work that they do. You know, and, and you kind of you know, I went and I've talked to the the executive director met with her a couple of times in her office and just, you know, I just went and met with her and say, hey, what can we do to help? I mean, obviously, we can help, you know, we can be there once a year to help sponsor your main fundraising event. But you know, there's 12 months in the year. What else dia, Surely you've got other things going on. And you know, and they have, I mean, they have simple things like diaper and formula drives, I mean, you know, these, these children come in, and they're young, you know, and they, they come in with just, you know, the clothes on their back, you know, you think, man, I've had a good 10 year run. And, you know, nobody should be in that situation. So, you know, I'm over at the warehouse, you know, the Costco or the Sam's Club, or whatever warehouse we all go to, and, you know, mosey your card on over to to the diaper section and fill it up, you know, and then drive it down there. I know, it looks weird, almost 60 year old guy filling up this cart with diapers and formula, and then there's a limit on the amount of formula you can buy here in the States, which is aggravating so, you know, I get it.
It's a heartwarming image of you, Jeff. Yeah, thanks.
I'll send a picture next time. But anyway, you Yes, you kind of, you know, you know, drive it over to them and, and drop it off at their front desk and just just leave, you know, no big production, it just, you know, I pull up there, I got a handcart and I said, Hey, I got some stuff for you, you know, and they're like, Oh, cool. Can you just set it right here in this very crowded lobby, you know, and you just, here you go, thank you very much. I don't need a receipt. I'm good. You know, and they take care of it. And so there's things like that, that they do during the year, whether it be clothing drives, or toy drives or stuff like that, where, you know, they can take it any old time, but they have emphasis every month, they've got something else going on. So anyway, just you know, we do we just kind of build a relationship there. And, you know, they return in favorite No, Patrick, I'm not changing diapers, I draw the eye. My time with that is done. Anyway. You know, I, you know, they in turn, become one of our best marketing avenues. They are always referencing us threw out all their social media accounts and everything else like that. And we don't ask them to do it. It's, it's, you know, they just automatically do it. And now, you know, we've been fortunate now we just met with them last week. They Got a brand new facility, they just bought an old building an old grocery store building, and they're looking at spending about 12 plus million dollars on the remodel of it. And they had us out there last week, and we're gonna, we're gonna give you know, we're going through the whole proposal process with them right now. And that's something that I wouldn't have been there 10 years ago, I wouldn't have been considered. So nice, you know, you you can we can all add the numbers on profit first and all that you can add up the money I've spent just at that one organization, and, you know, the profit will more than cover that. So, you know, and then you're, then you're really involved with this group, and you kind of put your heart and soul into it a little bit more.
Can you give us an idea of some of the return on investment? Like how much how much were you spending in the early days versus how much you're spending now? And like, what does it convert to in terms of projects?
Well, well, in the early days, a seat at the general admission table would probably be like, 50 bucks or so? Or maybe, you know, it'd be less than 100.
Yeah.
You know, and then when we were buying just a regular table, we were probably spending, I don't know, I don't even know, if we're spending 1000 bucks, that table, you know, and it's a big production, you know, comes with dinner and all this other stuff. And then there's, you know, like everything else, they've got silent auction and public auction, or live auction, whatever you wanna call it. You know, and again, getting very little return off that, you know, and, and, but when you step up to the plate, and you're one of the title sponsors, you know, it's a, it'll make my checkbook think a little bit on how much you know, it's for this one event, the title sponsorship is $25,000. But if you're doing that, and you're spending 25,000, and let's just say you're spending it on marketing. But you're getting a 12 plus million dollar project, plus all the marketing they're doing for us and the residual projects we get off of that. Yeah, I mean, look, it's it's great return on investment. I mean, take the
testimonies. The money's gone to charity, right? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it all Yeah, the the money we pay all goes to charity, everything there that night is sponsored. And so, you know, from the catering to the entertainment to, you know, and then of course, there's the live auction, which, you know, I'll probably drop a few more few more coins on that too, just to, you know, it's, I'm not gonna say it's a rule. But it's kind of this understanding that if you're sitting up front, you need to box in to, it's kind of kind of a thing. But, you know, it just it again, I set the marketing budget at the beginning of the year, and just don't go over it.
So once you've you've done this, you've kind of it's very clear as well that you know, the the mission of the charities as well as important to you. And it's like an authentic kind of alignment of values. You've obviously you've resisted in the past, for more formal advertising, why haven't you not done something like that? Like just put, just put advert spin the same sort of money, but in adverts in magazines. We
don't we don't get any return off of it. In fact, we just, I just, I just terminated our relationship with our PR consultant, because that was their main point of emphasis. They were just like, it was always like, Hey, if you advertise this magazine, they got readership. But what and it'd be a regional thing, it wouldn't be like a national thing. And we, we were getting absolutely no return on investment, like the last one we did was a fewer few years ago. It's for a magazine up here in Lake Tahoe. So all the homeowners in Lake Tahoe got it and we were trying to get some residential work up there. And I think it cost us almost $2,000 to get a full page advertisement in there with a paid editorial, you know, and we, not only we first of all, we are on page 47 of this magazine, so it's just like you you didn't get us in a good spot at all. And it we've got absolutely no nothing on that. You know, we get more off of our we get more off of our website down at the bottom of every page on our website is a simple if you want a consultation, name, contact email and a brief description of your project. I probably get two or three of those a week. Now. Very few of them are in a tight project. Most of them are C's and I pass them on to my colleagues because it's just not worth it for us but you know it, it we just weren't getting anything. Any return. I will say this If For some of these organizations, when we do their events, they'll have a pamphlet or something that they hand out, we will make sure we're in there because just it just kind of completes the process of sponsorship there. But this last year, the children's cabinet, for our title sponsorship, they included a one page ad for us. And we were able to film a commercial, which was actually really cool. We filmed the 62nd commercial that my staff didn't even know about it, right, I brought the production crew in and said, Hey, we're just doing some video for the website and some marketing, don't worry about it, just you know, if you have, you're going to be interviewed, try to be yourself, which nobody can. And I went back to the production company, and we created the 62nd spot about, it was really about us not not about any of our projects, and just about us and our culture and our people. And it was kind of a surprise to the staff, they knew nothing about it. So it's just kind of one of those, you know, one of those different moments, they're
interesting, there's a lot of actual kind of production of other kinds of marketing collateral that happened as a result of being involved with these fans.
This is not just show up. And you know, this isn't just a show up in and an eat this really great dinner and listen to some, you know, listen to some stories here. This is a it's an event, you know, they're asking for a lot of money. And, you know, yeah, they put on, they put on?
Well, there's also a risk here of like, you know, you go in, you spend big money for a table, meet people. And then you don't do anything afterwards, it could all just peter out how how, or what does your follow up strategy look like? After the events because that would be the, I'm guessing a bit of a risk.
It is a risk? Yeah, you got to follow up afterwards, we, I make a point within the next week or so of everybody I met to reach out to them follow up with them either by usually by then I've got a I can usually get a cell phone or something, you know that I can get a direct text to him and just go meet with them, follow them up, you know, then take them out to lunch or take them to, you know, take them to you know, we've got a suite at the AAA baseball stadium here get get them up there to where then it's a little bit more of a, you know, have a directive there where we're, you know, we're trying to do a hard sell there. And, you know, but then it kind of Yeah, a little bit a little bit different, different approach there. But yeah, if you don't follow up, and it's, it's a lot of money down the drain.
And how long does it take, say for say a relationship has kind of begun at one of these events to turn into a project?
It's, um, it's a year, a year plus? Its projects don't come together quickly. So you, you kind of Yeah, you kind of it takes a bit there.
So, one of the other things that we were talking about prior to this was the kinds of offers that you create for these clients, what can you talk to us a little bit about that? And the sorts of, you know, when you're following up with a client, how do you start to get them engaged in working with you, in terms of making it a bit kind of less committal or easier for them to start a project with you?
I think right away, we start with just, you know, hey, how can we? How can we partner with you? How can we help you? What, what, you know, one of the first things I talk to prospective clients about, especially on the commercial side is Tell me about your business? What do you guys do? What do you make? What do you like? What business issues do you have? Where Where do you see some inefficiencies? And where do you see, you know, what would you like to do? And I always ask, you know, my, especially on the commercial side is like, you know, I can't really solve for today. But where do you think your business is going to be in five years? How many people? How big do you think you're going to be in five years? Let's design for that. Because that's in reality, you know, I mean, solving for today is just just go out and rent a bigger office space and move in. But let's How about if you want to, you know, you want to build a user building for yourself, like a corporate campus or office for yourself? Let's solve for five and 10 years down the road and get them thinking and get them ingrained? And, you know, I always always like to go to their, their, wherever their business is, and do you know and take a tour of how they work and let them tell me, because they'll just start talking, right? And they'll tell you everything about their business, and there's like, oh, this doesn't work over here. And all of a sudden, it'll be like, you know, we could really do we really need this. Ah, you need you need an architect. Here's where we're Er, you know, so I really get into just, you know, tell me about you tell me, how can we how can we help you? How can we solve your problems? I mean, you know, from the littlest things to it's amazing, just the littlest effort, how it opens up the door. And you just kind of, you know, as soon as that doors open, he just opened it up a little bit more. Next thing you know, you're in.
You got some, some questions here. chatbox.
What do we do? Do I take it as a charitable contribution? deduction? Or do I declare it as a marketing expense? Um, if it's a charitable contribution, it that of course, I take it, you know, marketing expense, it depends. If I'm receiving something in return, it's a tax, like, it's a tax issue there. So that's where it kind of it, it falls, I leave that one to the accounting there, if I'm getting something for it, then I can't take it as a deduction, I'm just kind of paying. So it becomes more of a marketing expense.
Because often I what I find is when you when you do that, they they give you a lot of promotion, right? So they are, they're putting your logo up there, there's some times they do little snippets about your business and played them on videos and things like that. And that's, that's when you're getting something right. So that's more of a marketing expense.
Yeah, I think it true. That's kind of what I would say more like the formal marketing. The thing that I really go after is the is what potential relationships can I make at this event? And who do I not know? And who can? Who who can introduce me to somebody that I don't know yet. And that's, you know, for me, it's just that that marketing opportunity that I'm really, really, really going after, I'm
guessing you could classify as either, depending, which is most tax beneficial to you, from your counters perspective. Yeah, I had a, I was chatting the other day to a friend of mine, who she runs a catering business here in the UK. And she does these sort of really extravagance, weddings, she says a lot of the people, she works for kind of entrepreneurs and their business owners, and they will often play a video, or have a screen set up of their promoting their own businesses, so they can write off some of their wedding expenses as marketing expenses.
However, it works.
No, I'm not advising people to do that. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
No, no accounting advice here, um, thoughts on sponsoring events versus volunteering to be on the board for an organization that you're really passionate about this came from Shaylee, we actually do both. So one of the things that just from a cultural standpoint that I really impress upon my staff is, like, Look, I can't do all this myself. And I'm actually, I told my staff recently is I'm tapped out as far as time. So I don't, I can't really do any more. But, look, we've opened the door at certain certain organizations, they need volunteers, they need board members, they need committee members they have, they've all got little committees that meet, and you're talking like a meeting once every other month, at the most, you know, get on one of these, get on these, and you know, they usually meet, they usually meet at lunchtime, for the most part, don't get on one, whatever that little segment is getting involved. That's really how you start really becoming part of the overall business community. And the overall just, you know, you want to become part of the community, and you got to kind of step out there. So that's kind of where, where we, where we really work. Let's see, where do I find these charitable events? You know, I, I'll tell you, you, they always advertise it, and they always it's always on. You know, I'll be honest with you, it's always on local news. Hey, so and so had an event tonight, you know, and so you're always that's kind of where I'd find where all these people are. It's, they're out there in the public, the public realm there. They like to be noticed as well. I mean, it's, you know, they're the night that they have it, they're always on the news. So, you know, you just kind of have to have to look for them. And they, you know, all of a sudden they'll surface for you. Yeah, for these mostly national or not national are they mostly like state organizations or kind of more localized? So, these ones are local, but like the food bank, every community has a food bank, right? Every community has a Children's Cancer Foundation. They have, you know, an area like that the children his cabinet, which is one that we have really honed in on, I believe they are more statewide. I know there's a Southern Nevada chapter. And then of course, we're in the northern Nevada chapter that we help out with. So it's um, they really, like I say, and summertime is their, their season and kind of after school starts back in again. So late September through October, they'll have some as well. So, like, we had some in, like in August, right before school started. I had an event every Friday night for like four nights in a row that we attended. And like I said, some events, we were the title sponsor, on some events, we were there as guests from other people. But again, it's the people in that room are the same people in all the events, they kind of you noticed you've got multiple opportunities to meet them. Let's see, Ed, have they produced a significant amount of residential work? They have? They actually do, because all these people who have their names and who are donating and all this, they've all got these real big houses that they want to build. So it has, we have gotten a couple of those over the past few years. And it's just been a it's what's what's nice, is it's been a phone call, you know, Hey, Jeff, looking on your website, looks like you do some residential, would you be interested in, you know, designing a new house for us somewhere? You know, it's like, yeah, you would, I don't want to go into another architect, right? You know, I want to do all your commercial work, because that's where I make the most profit. We do the residential part. It's not a large percentage of our work. But I don't want you to talk to somebody else. You know, I just so yeah, we do that. Um, what else we got? Let's see,
can you can you share the tables? So say, for example, just thinking here, like, if you're a smaller practice? Is it? Is it feasible that you could buy a table with two businesses? Or does it have to be a single entity, you
can buy, you can buy individual seats, or it Yeah, so if you, if you're not buying a whole table, and it's whatever the cost of the table is, and you just have like two or three people or four people that want to go, you just buy four tickets, and they will put you at a table with other people who just bought individual tickets or individual seats. So yeah, even then, you don't get the sponsorship, though, then you don't get the sponsorship? No, you don't get the sponsorship levels there. Because usually, like when we sponsor the children's cabinet event, it comes with two tables sitting right up front. Right?
Let's see. Do you find you discount your work when working with these charitable organizations? Or do you charge market rate hourly and I charge market rate, my employees, my employees won't take a discount on their paycheck. So I have to charge market rate. And you know what? They understand it. You know, they they get it. And, you know, especially when we're doing a huge project for them. They don't want us charging discounted rate, they want our full attention. And, and they get and they pay for these huge capital projects. They pay for him with the grants they get in so and I'll tell you those grants have a line item in there for professional he services. And they've got good amounts in there. So yeah, I don't. Yeah, I charge what we'd normally charge. The year period to get a project from a new prospect, it's a long time to maintain the relationship. Yeah, it is. We stay in front of them, we stay again, when they have kind of intermittent calls to whatever, you know, for for whatever help we make sure we're there for whatever it is, if you're, you know, taking food to people who can't get out of their house, you know, organizations have, it's like, Alright, tell me where I need to go. Tell me when I need to pick up the food bags. And I'll spend a day doing it. You know, so that's kind of that relationship that it does take a lot of effort. And this is what i i talk about sacrifice. It's sometimes you have to sacrifice your personal time and your company time. And you're gonna have to make that up some other time. It's but marketing is, you know, if we're supposed to be spending what 25% of our time marketing, if I spend one day a week, or one, or no more than one day, a week, one and a half or quarter days a week, and I gotta take a day and I've got to go run something for these people, for these organizations. That's, that's marketing. That's making an effort. That's, you know, they will remember who helped them out. And they will again, they will turn into your best marketing Avenue and it's and it's all advertising from there. I mean, like social media nowadays. We do this silliest of things, and they're plastering our name all over social media like last year, I took my staff over to, to Walmart at in the middle of the afternoon right before Christmas. Reno Rodeo had a clothing drive. There was I don't know, there was like seven or eight of us. I grabbed three baskets, I said, fill them up and meet me at the checkout line. And the baskets just mounted. And we couldn't fit all the clothes in that we could barely fit them into the back of this guy, one of my employees SUV. We got it in there. We took some pictures. And we called the radar rodeo and call us at Hey, they gave us a barrel to donate clothes. And we call them said hey, the barrels full. Can you come over and pick it up? Bring us a new barrel, he had no idea what he was getting into. He comes over and our conference table is stacked four and five feet tall of just kids clothes. He looked at it isn't his jaw dropped. He's like, I'm gonna have to make several trips. I said, Well, I'll help you. Where do I got to deliver it out? He's like, Nah, I'll come back. He came back like twice. Next thing, you know, our social media is pinging all over the place. They put it up all over the place. And he said, We've never had a company do that before. Where it just flooded us. And it showed the pile of the stacks of clothes. And they're kind of in their space. And they were sorting through everything. We cleaned out Walmart's kids clothing section, I also found out that there's a maximum number of items you can have on a single checkout. At Walmart. We hit it. It's like all of a sudden the checker goes, I can't take any more. So what do you mean, because you've hit the maximum number of items is all right. Well, I'll just bring it up again, on the next one. So, you know, it's just kind of one of those things that like, again, it was dollars, I think we spent about I don't know, a few 1000 bucks that day. But you're going to spend, you're gonna spend 20 to 25% of your time and marketing budget. There it is. And that's how the simple way to do it. But you get, you know, I still do this day, I get complimented on that. And it's been it has been 11 months now. It's coming up again here next month. Yeah, we got to get ready again. So anyway. So it is you have to make follow up effort, you have to stay in front of them. You have to you know what the simple thing we did is I did is I call them up, my dad said, Hey, I'd like to tour your facility. I've never been there. Did you? Do you have time? Do you have like a half hour, you know, and all sudden, she calls me back? She has a job, hey, I got like 45 minutes on such a such day. And I squeezed into my account. I just went and talked to him. Like what exactly because I didn't know everything they did. It's like, okay, what exactly everything you do, and you kind of run through, they're just one of their facilities. And you see what they do is like, okay, I can help out here. And we can do a little something here. Oh, you got to committee here. I've got a couple of employees that need to get involved in. That's how you, you know, again, nothing bold, nothing, just kind of just a very sly, subtle move that just builds up over time.
I think what's really great about this is that there's a compound effect. Yeah, right. So the each time that you're you're sponsoring for these tables, each time you're becoming visible, like you're just kind of, you know, you're you're building more and more relationship that kind of just deepens over time. Yeah,
we do build time in for staff, it's just kind of $1 thing. You know, it's, it's, like I said, there's $1 amount that we put. So in that dollar amount, it's a combination of staff time and, and just hard cash, and we go over it every year. I don't know what to say. We just, you know, and I it is what it is, you know, that's kind of the one line item we bust the budget on every year and but it's it is paying off. It's, you know, it's starting to really pay off. I think it does. Lisa, as far as our formal mission and core values envision Yeah, it is. It's, um, do we advertise it? Yeah, you'll it's, it's just part of being in the community. We know that we're not, we can't, we're just not architects who can sit in a closet and wait for the work to matriculate in. I did that in 2006 and 2007. And a bit me in 2008. And, you know, it's part of that getting out there. We know we're a small part of a larger community. And we need to, we need to do a part that you know is larger than what we are. And so when you get a firm of like eight or nine people dropping that kind of money to be a title sponsor, when your other title sponsors up, there are multimillion dollar gaming properties here in Nevada, of course, or we got an automotive Automotive Group, you know, they obviously make quite a bit more than we do. You know, it was funny, because one of the automotive groups that was a sponsor was actually one of our clients this year. I mean, it was just kind of like, we had a good old time talking there for a bit, you know, is this, you know, and so, you know, that's just, you know, but it comes at a cost, it comes at a real high cost, I just realized that, you know, we were coming up on our 20th anniversary, we, like I said, we had, we've had a great 10 year run, and it's just like, wait a minute, it's time to step up the game. And give back a little bit more.
Got a question there from Chad.
You have to let the company do the marketing for you. Otherwise, it doesn't seem genuine. You're right, Chad, we and, and we do we let we let those guys you know, market for us. You know, I mean, we, you know, we don't we acknowledge it, but we don't push it, we don't push it. As hard as they push it, once they've been the reception of some of our efforts. You know, we may, we may do a little buzz, just a little social media posts, like, Hey, here's a card of wine here in the summer, a card of diapers and formula, I think I put on the caption next up children's cabinet, all of a sudden, that was being repeated by dozens of people, including the children's cabinet, you know, and so it's just like, that's all it was, you know, and so it was kind of just kind of put it out there a little bit. And then just lets other let everybody else run with it. So you do have to you do have to put it out there yourself a bit. You know, it's the kind of the catalyst that gets the ball rolling. But it's not like I'm not making a huge marketing campaign based upon one little effort that I'm not doing I'm not spending a lot of money. I'm not sending out flyers on it doesn't show up on my website. It's a quick social media posts, and then I'm off.
Fantastic. Very good. And I think one final thing I was gonna ask you, Jeff was your favorite tool for connecting with people.
My favorite tool for connecting with people. And I'm old school i, i I'm face to face. I'm, I'm I pick up the phone and use it as a phone. One of these days one of these mobile phone manufacturers actually make a decent phone that works. But yeah, as a phone, I I'm old school, I like to go meet with people I like to call them on the phone. i i You know, I mean, I know, my staffs listening, they're gonna hate this. They like to text and whatever else that I, I can't stand that I just I pick up a phone call them, you know, and I do I call the director of these organizations all the time. And, and if they don't pick up, they call me right back within within a short amount of time. I just It's just I know, it's the gray hair.
And I love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. I think I think it sounds so obvious. But the phone is like probably the most underutilized tool that we have in marketing.
You know, you can't you can't just sit here at our computers, like we're all sitting right now. And I gotta get on Google and go send me clients. It's not gonna work, you'll get a lot of advertisements popping up about firms who can, you know, hey, they can put you on the front page of Google or at the top of Google, I get those calls all the time. And my first response to them is, what industry Am I in? And there's this long, uncomfortable pause from the telemarketer. And I said first rule of business, no, your client. I said, and then I say this conversation is over. But let them go. That's how we get an our client that you know, I mean, I, I didn't like this project we're getting with the Children's cabinet. I heard about it. And I kind of heard through the rumblings and then we did a bunch of stuff for him. And one of the main context goes, hey, you've heard about our project. Yes. Oh, yeah. How's that going? I didn't put the hard sell on. But how's it going? I heard you guys bought the building or what? You know what's on this, she started going in and all the programs are going to be and then then she goes, we'll be calling you. So okay. Yeah, we'd love to help you out. And of course, man, my heart was racing when she said that because I knew they had some I knew it was gonna be a good sized project. So yeah, we went in toward it last week as a matter of fact, so it does it takes a while. This is not a quick hurry. turn lanes are good sized projects. Brilliant. Brilliant.
Thank you very much, Jeff in a perfect place to, to conclude there. And
that's a wrap. Oh yeah, one more thing. If you haven't already, head on over to iTunes and leave a review, we'd love to read your name out here on the show. And now a word from our sponsor and escape. And escape is a plugin software that simplifies real time visualization for you in the architecture, engineering and construction industry. So you know whether your go to design application is Revit, SketchUp, Rhino ArchiCAD, or Vectorworks, and scape lets you instantly create high quality renderings by syncing data from your 3d model without additional import or export needed, easily navigate every aspect of your design in real time, and identify and resolve any issues that you come across quickly. Plus, as an added benefit, you can immerse your clients in VR to provide that amazing sense of walking through the project. If you didn't know and scape was the Trusted Choice of over 500,000 monthly users across 150 countries. And today they're launching their Black Friday deal which means you get any annual license you want and save 20% Just visit Kaos dash inscape.com That's ch A O S dash, e n s C A P e.com. And use code B f 23. That's B as in boy F as in Frank 23 at checkout to supercharge your design workflow. Thank you Inscape 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. QRP DM
