605: The Future of Architecture Part 1: Fees, Salaries, and Positioning with Paul Iddon of Agency PSI
EEnoch SearsDec 31, 2024 at 1:54 pm42min
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00:00Rion Willard
You have to look for different ways strategies to increase value. Hello and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your host, Ryan Willard, and today I'm delighted to welcome Paul inden, the founder of agency psi, who bring a truly unique and valuable perspective to the intersection of architecture and marketing. So Paul's remarkable career spans an impressive 22 years in architecture, followed by another 22 years in consumer and B to B branding, marketing and communications. This dual expertise gives him unparalleled understanding of both the creative and commercial sides of the industry. At the heart of Paul's work is his focus on architects as the core audience of his business through agency, psi, he collaborates closely with manufacturers, helping them achieve the all important goal of being specified. What makes Paul's journey even more remarkable is that he's the only former architecture practice owner to transition into this specialized role creating a bridge between architects and the businesses that support them, Paul's deep involvement in the architectural community at both regional and national levels, ensures he stays at the forefront of industry, insights, trends and behavior and today we discuss a little bit about the positioning of The architect, how we can use behavioral economics, marketing psychology and marketing strategies to increase and improve the position of the architect, and of course, address that all important conversation around raising our fees and raising our salaries. So Paul is a favorite of Business of Architecture. This is the, I'm not even sure, maybe the third or fourth time. Probably the fourth time, I think he's been on the show. He always provides wisdom and actionable ideas. So sit back, relax. This is going to be a two parter and enjoy. Paul hidden. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice business of architecture's flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how he might be able to help you, please follow the link in the information we are looking for architect developer stories for the Business of Architecture podcast. So are you an architect developer with valuable insights to share? We're always on the lookout for passionate voices in the industry to join us on the Business of Architecture podcast. If you're ready to share your journey lessons, strategies with our global audience, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us to explore being a guest on our show and help inspire other architect developers on their path. We'd be interested in hearing your story, whether you're at the very beginning of your development story, or whether you have $100 million portfolio of projects already in the bag, completed. We'd like to hear from you if you're working with the developers, or that you've developed a number of small houses, or you're working at a larger scale. Oh, welcome Brian. Is this of architecture again? One of my favorite boa guests, always a pleasure to have you. How are you? I'm
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03:24Speaker 1
good. Thanks, Ryan. How are you? It's always good to see you. I think this is my third time up. I hope I've got something different to say this. I think
Unknown Speaker
it is your third or your fourth.
Unknown Speaker
Oh, I don't know. Could
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03:35Rion Willard
be right. I'm pretty sure we've had a couple of we've had a couple in the in the studio, in the garden before, and then what one actually came up to you in Manchester?
Unknown Speaker
That's right. Yeah, you're right. You're right. My memory's going.
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03:48Rion Willard
There we go. There we go. You have been a favorite on the BOA podcast for a number of years. It's always a pleasure to be speaking with you. And thanks, Rand. Today we're going to talk about, I think, fees and salaries in the architecture profession and and obviously, you've recently been elected as in a role at the roba. Can you tell us a little bit about what that role is and how you got elected?
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04:17Speaker 1
Yeah, to be honest, I it was advertised that, you know the basically, there's two, there's two seats on the National Council in London that that allotted to the Riba Northwest, but you can only be elected for those seats in the Riba Northwest. So I decided to just have a go. I thought, I can't wait another three years. So it was all a bit last minute, but I decided to stand and then I had a bit of a campaign and and I won a seat on the fantastic result of 86 seats, 86 votes was 85 which, you know, I mean the amount of effort per vote. Right, but I'm glad it wasn't just me, but the two seats, and there were three of us campaigning, and I kind of got behind spoke, and then one of the other existing counselors kept their seat, Chitra Marsh, who's great. She's great, Chitra. And so that means, basically, I sit on the Riba North West Committee, which is Council, which kind of meets every month, and then we have another one at the rib in London, and we do some of those live, or someone by zoom. So that's on top of my role as Vice President of Manchester Society of architects. So my wife keeps saying to me, like, what you doing. My kids are going, dad, dad, like, what you doing. And I went, well. And what's wonderful
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05:54Rion Willard
about this is you're not even a practicing architect these days. No,
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05:58Speaker 1
no, I'm one of those weird characters that's I haven't practiced for donkeys years, but, well, at least 25 years. But I'm so embedded in the community because I play a different kind of role. And I think, you know, and I'm really glad to say that, you know, all my colleagues in Manchester and the ones on the northwest Council, you know they say it as positive. You know that they've got somebody who has got a different skill set that's trying to help out, and I feel very, I suppose, on a time by life right where I feel like I need to contribute, give something back, and I'm in a position to do it, and I've got a different kind of outlook. So, yeah, it's keeping them busy. So that's kind of, so the role is, basically, I get to vote on things and get to discuss various, various things.
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06:50Rion Willard
Well, I think it's, I think any, any platform where we've got kind of someone like yourself with a outside perspective and a deep understanding of architecture and your your perspective as well is very interesting, and I think, very powerful for the architecture industry in terms of your understanding of behavioral economics, your understanding of marketing, your understanding of business, your understanding of psychology. And we've had that kind of conversation before, on on the podcast, and as and as also as it pertains to, you know what we're going to talk about today, salaries and fees, which is often a topic which, I mean, people get very heated about it, and we see it kind of coming up on, it's the it's the favorite of The link of the LinkedIn comment boxes. Oh, but there's a bit of a hesitancy on the part of some of our beloved institutions in architecture to be addressing this topic in a meaningful manner.
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07:56Speaker 1
Well, just observe over the past couple of years, you know, with the Building Safety Act, giving new powers to the ARB, I mean, one of the confusing things a lot of people don't sound the difference between the rib and the ARB, and I have to constantly explain it, not to registered architects, but to other players in that fashion, obviously being powers granted under the architects Act, the ARB, and they've increased their fees dramatically, and they're playing a much more sort of hands on role in validation and certification, things like that. And checking architects, sorry, Ryan, she told a second, sir, no, perhaps my wife, she's listening, is that your wife's new book? Yeah, white wife and Nick Marsh. I didn't write this. This is Nick master Barbara. So absolutely shameless plug
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08:57Rion Willard
that. Absolutely plug it in. We'll put, we'll put the info into the podcast information, into the podcast information.
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09:05Speaker 1
So, yeah, so the IRB have, kind of, you know, are all over this, and the ribs response is to provide their role is obviously, they say it's to provide a lot of the CPD content through their platforms, and so the ARB doesn't provide any of that knowledge. It just checks basically where the Riba obviously sees it as an important role in doing that. But we'll talk about almost every subject, but fees and salaries are one which are quite seems to be quite difficult. ARB won't discuss it at all because they don't see it as their role. They're probably right, although they hold on to the title protection of title. So the question is, there is the ARB? Are they? Are they spending enough time and energy check? Facing people who abuse the title. But from the Ri based point of view, obviously they you know that they comment out salaries, as we've just seen, an email came out from the President and about reminding chartered practices on their their sort of responsibilities to pay a living wage, especially in London, which is insanely expensive place to live, but when it comes to fees, that it's a much more difficult area, and they do things like guerrilla tactics, they do some CPD content on it. And I suppose where I'm coming from is I think we need something a bit more radical. And, you know, we need to look at positioning, and we need to look at strategy, and not just whether we can nudge things up by a percentage or two. And I think the fallout of the golden thread and the Building Safety Act and principal designer does, does present some opportunities for architects in the UK to to actually look at increasing their fee levels? Yeah, but I think there's a fair bit of pain that's going to go on with that, but it's got to happen. And in when there's already quite a bit of pain in the profession already, and I recognize that. So I suppose, from my perspective, and the work I do with the society, and hopefully with the Riba, is trying to find solutions for people, especially smaller practices who can't afford to bring people in. You know, I
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11:34Rion Willard
mean, I mean, I think, you know, whenever I look at the Riba benchmarking statistics, or there's any kind of poll on fees and salaries. I mean, I'm never not shocked by the the average wage of a sole practitioner, of which you know, that makes up the massive chunk of all architects in the UK. I mean, in the in the US. I was just reading the New AIA report that said 28% 28% of all architects are sole practitioners. And then it was like 75% of of all architects are working in a micro practice, basically, or practice under nine people. And I suspect that the same as in, I mean, I've read the Riba reports, it's a very similar sort of percentile. And in the UK, obviously, the the last averages were something in the region, was it 25 26,000 pounds for an architect, yeah, who's a sole practitioner. That's what they're taking home. That's, that's just barely above your minimum wage. It's, it's just utterly, utterly insane. And of course, then, you know, there's, there's no frustration I get, I get, you know, messages on LinkedIn all the time from young students who are, you know, kind of shocked at how much they're going to get paid. I had a conversation recently with a young lady who was about to embark on an architectural career, and she was all excited, and she wanted to get some work experience. And I know one of her I know her father, and he put me in contact to give her some advice or to help her get some work experience. And, of course, I said, I said, have you looked at what architects get paid? And she was like, she was like, No. And I was like, before you embark on this journey, just have a look. Just Just have a look, because it because it's a it's a really long investment in terms of what you're about to put through for your education. You don't know necessarily what it is that you're entering into. And it's a very structured education, and once you're in the culture of it kind of sucks you forward with blinkers on, and then you're spat out at the other end, and the the salary expectations are like, they're just, it's hard, it's very, very difficult. Are you prepared? I I
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14:19Speaker 1
talked to year six at School of Architecture, and I asked him, put your hands up all of those who use Google to find out an architect salary, average salary. I said, I didn't have Google when I did it. I said, Could I googled it and I found it in 30 seconds. I mean, you know, Caveat emptor, like, you know, there's such a thing as contributory negligence. Here's something you know. You know, if you don't check things out, then that's your lookout. I mean, I mean, it's
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14:49Rion Willard
interesting as well. Because I guess sometimes at that age, you know, if you're going from having no salary ever, or not having a job or a paper round, you. Suddenly going to, you know, 22k as a young architect, maybe that sounds like a lot of money.
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15:06Speaker 1
True, true. It's relative. But yeah, there you don't have to go far on social media before you find a lot of information about this and how bad it is. Yeah, there are, there are certain, there's certain, certain people who are very vocal about it. You know,
Unknown Speaker
yeah, absolutely.
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15:26Speaker 1
I don't tend to post an awful lot about that. I mean, some of the greatest, not greatest, sorry, some of the biggest portions of this are recruitment people. And obviously it's a way to, it's a marketing tool for them, but it can really instigate some really unfortunate exchanges on LinkedIn, for instance. I think that's restrained as to remind one person quoting who was an architectural technologist that they by the comment they just put on, they just broken their code of conduct with sea, because there's this kind of pitch battle about the title architect, and, you know, it's like, my view is, look, it's a different training. Okay? You train for a different thing. They're not the same. If you want to train for the title architect, then train for it, okay, but if you don't want to do it, fair enough, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not criticized. I'm just saying you're comparing apples and oranges. But, yeah, my issue with all of this is that this is going to get us nowhere. We can, you can? You know, have a rant and feel better for about 30 seconds or a minute or an hour, but at the end of the day, it's not going to fix the problem. It reminds me of that scene from Apollo 13, when they're all in this capsule and they're all having an argument, like 200,000 miles away from a from the nearest oxygen, and then Tom Hanks playing, you know, Jim Lovell says we're not going to do this. We're not going to go bouncing off the walls, because we end up exactly where we are. And you just to me, it's like, well, let's just cut past all of this. We know what the problem is. The question now is, what are the solutions? What can we do? I mean, one solution is to leave the profession. One conclusion is to trans is to sort of transfer into an allied field project management or design manager or principal designer. But either way, I cannot see a situation where it's not going to result in a drop in supply. I The problem is, is there's the way I see it and correct me if I'm wrong. There's a discrepancy between what the university's motivations are and the profession's motivation. University, obviously, it's in their interest to have as many students as possible.
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17:54Rion Willard
They are, as I think we said before, they're a business too, and we've Exactly, we forget to look at them like a business, and that there's they're selling a product, and they've catered their product to have it scalable.
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18:10Speaker 1
The problem with it is that that soon release, if you, if you're, if you're producing loads of products as a business, yeah, and then also the prices start dropping. Then you have to look at thinking, Okay, well, are we over producing? Is there just not the demand? And if you carry on doing that, you're going to undermine your own business model, which, you know, in any other business, in any other walk of life. That's a major consideration, but it just doesn't seem to be there's certain things that don't add up. I can't quite from a psychological point of view, at what point do people think this just isn't worth it? Or they stop and the numbers go down. But there's, I can't see any evidence.
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18:59Rion Willard
So I suppose you know when, often, when I speak with academics, their their kind of counterpoint view on it is that well, and you know, this is quite common, quite common view that we're not, we're not. We're not training people to become architects. We're not. We're not creating people. What
Unknown Speaker
do we're not,
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19:24Rion Willard
we're not, we're not, we're not creating, we're not creating people for the profession. And that's where I think there's a, there's like, a there's like, it's something that lacks a little bit of integrity, or it's dishonest with what's being sold. Then then let students know that, that that, you know, there's often the argument of, like, well, we're creating people who can, who can be great generalists, and they can go into any other sorts of field. But that's not, that's not, that's not your experience when you're when you're on an architecture program. Like, the goal is very clearly laid out, to become an architect, to go into the. Profession, and the majority of students who are signing up have got an idea of becoming an architect, yeah, if
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20:06Speaker 1
you ask them, there's an, I mean, let's do a poll. I mean, let's find out what, what you expect to be doing at the end of this look, if the argument is, and I can see the university standpoint without being critical, but it's like a history degree or a PPE or English that, you know, they're seeing this good analytical training. My son did a history degree, and it's a good training internal to have to think and communicate. But, you know, there's no jobs as sort of like on the tools historians. Well, there's a few, the few podcasts like, the rest is history and things like, but, you know, it's, I saw a joke about this, did you say it about a person, person studying Egyptology, and the only future they had was to basically wait for, you know, was to to, to wait for a post In teaching Egyptology. And then to describe this is literally pyramid scheme, but it's so so I can understand,
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21:10Rion Willard
I saw that. Did I post that on LinkedIn?
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21:14Speaker 1
I think I reposted. I didn't do it anyway. It's very clever. Yeah, that's brilliant, but, I can if the university's business model is, you know, we're producing people who are thinkers, okay, but, you know, but architecture is actually a vocation, and it's at the end of it, it's, it's a specific job. It's like training to be a doctor, if you're saying, what cheats you medicine so you can go out and be a talk show host. Well, there's a couple of them, but the general aim is, you're going to learn medicine, you know, yeah, and
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21:49Rion Willard
that's it. I mean, you know, the, the the education system is very, is deeply intertwined with the, with the you becoming a profession. It's It's riba accredited, it's, but it's like you have to go through it at the moment to become an architect, for the most part, was the most common, common way to get to become a professional and and, you know, there is this kind of disconnect between what happens inside of academia and then becoming an architect. And it's not only that, you know, I will be quite critical of education, because, you know, a lot, one of the big complaints that we'll hear from the profession and from businesses is that students, by and large, are just not ready for the profession in any kind of way. And part of the, you know, part of the reason why the salaries are so low is because, number one, you've got this over supply. Number two, they can't do anything inside of a business. So they have a they have they don't, they don't have much economic value for the business, because now the business feels like they have to train people, certainly with part ones to be able to do stuff, and that becomes very, very problematic me as a business consultant, when we're looking at, particularly with smaller businesses, you know, I encourage them to hire more senior people first, as opposed to going straight in for, you know, loads of part ones, because They're cheaper, because it's like, yeah, but, you know, give you six months, you're going to be complaining about how your team can't do anything, and how you now you've become basic like a little, a little studio unit of education, where you're teaching people the ropes of architecture, and you're not getting any work done, and now your profits are going to slide, and then everyone gets fed up because they can't get paid anything.
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23:44Speaker 1
Well, exactly, it's a bit of a loop at the moment. So either I was talking to last night, I was talking to a Part One who just come out after the degree and they're having no luck finding work. I always feel terrible for them. You know, do we've all been there and we it. And I said, Look, if you really want to know what practices are interested in, it's interesting. Do you understand construction? Do you understand materials? So I said, I said to several tasks. I said, Go and find out a vapor barrier is, you know, I'm wearing shoes. They call it a vapor barrier. What they call it the vapor control layer. Thank you. And he looked at me, and I said, Well, if you know what that is, I said, that's a good it's a bit of a litmus test. I know a couple of architects who use that one, what's a what's a paper control area, where's it used? And he looked at me, and I said, so at least a very least, go and find that one out. And the other thing I say is, join CPD, understand materials, understand building regulations, because at least you. The more you the more you can demonstrate. You still looked into that side of things, but we talked about this before, but I really want to do a piece of research on this, but I don't think the Riba be interested. But how do architects get selected? You know, you think about it, you know, so. And I thought about, well, are they selected by the idea of being an architect? And I thought, well, not really, because unless you're the child of an architect, you know, or, you know, and there's obviously a few of those, but I would have thought the majority wouldn't really know what architecture is, you know, they probably got it up to tell you, I'm watching Keanu Reeves, yeah, well, no,
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25:43Rion Willard
it's interesting because it's a subject as well that you enter into, and you don't really know what on earth it is.
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25:52Speaker 1
So so you so you don't so that you're not your kind of personality type, in your attitude, your aptitude, is not selected at that stage, you'd select because you'd be maths, physics, about something. Then I think, okay, there's a 50% dropout rate. We all know, start to finish. So how do people get selected out, or select themselves in? And I think, well, so it's, it's either that, so it can't be that. So it comes to conclusion, it's the actual process itself that selects them. So that the crit process, the way that architects are trained, there will be people dropping out of various points because they either it's just too difficult, it it's not for them, which is fair enough, you know, or that, you know, you're putting your stuff on the wall, and getting slated for time after time is a way of, you know, kind of like, it's a bit like boot camp, isn't it? And at the end of it, you're going to end up with 50% of people who intend to be an architect. And I think, well, at what point are we actually said to these people, right? That's what you need to know. And I think, you know, because the universities kind of argue, well, the degree isn't about that. And the stock answer seems to be from a few people in academia. I mean, well, it's up to practice to train for that. And go, No, it isn't, yeah. I mean, you know, you have to add a discussion with one guy, UCL, and I say, look, the Building Safety Act is going to change everything, all right, the way the building regs works, part L, Part B, it's going to overturn the way architects are trained. It's obvious, but his response was, Well, they learn that when they go, surprise, yeah, but you, you're going through this process designing buildings without the first knowledge about, you know, Part B, then it's a fiction. It's a fiction, it's,
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27:46Rion Willard
yeah, it's, it's wild. And then this is, this is the most common complaint as well, you know, from from employers, is, is that there is that the students, their young architects, don't have any knowledge of, they don't know how to architect, right? And so, I mean, this is, this is the other thing about the kind of kind of question of the regulation of function, or wider, wider protections, when you're like, Well, you know, one, one of the big issues that the architecture industry has itself is it's not producing competent architects, you know, from the from the education, and it's, it's left up to the businesses. And then obviously a business is going to a business has to be. I mean, I'll often talk about it with people of about earning the right to be an educator in your business, in the sense that the profession is very nice, and I know a lot of architects love teaching, and that's great, but your business isn't a school in the sense that you've got to be very careful, because you've got to be very careful, particularly as a small business taking on lots of inexperienced architects, and I appreciate you love teaching them all, but then it's at the expense of you making money, and then everyone's complaining about having low fees and all this kind of stuff and there's a lack of lack of experience. So, you know, larger businesses have more capacity to be able to do really good part one programs and make sure that everyone's got all of the education that they need and all that kind of stuff. But then what the hell are students doing for seven years? I mean, I'd be more sympathetic to this argument that businesses that you learn on the job, if architectural education wasn't seven years of somebody's life
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29:33Speaker 1
and five of those years, how much, how much a year. I mean, you know, if one of these young people went to a bank said, I want to buy a BMW, seven Sears, or an Audi, top line Audi. And the bankers say, so, yeah, okay, so what's your income? Oh, I'm a student, and they're gonna go, Yeah, okay. Well, listen, good luck with studies. Come back when you got a job and we. At a bank loan. But it's almost like, Oh, you want to see the architecture. That's like, best part of the 100 grand, or is, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure some more. So you know, why isn't there a cooling off period for this? It seems to me, and as you say, when I see so many practitioners said they do teach, I'm thinking, are we getting back into a pyramid scheme. It's sort of, you shouldn't have time for that, you know. I mean, yeah, if you get later on your career, and you're sort of, you know, very experienced, you know, and there's a few architects like that, and, yeah, absolutely, you need the wisdom and knowledge of knowledge of somebody who's been practicing for 30 years to go and say, Look, this is what it's about. You know, give you the kind of Marcus alias bit like, think about it, but we it's almost like the professional moment would rather talk about anything else except the people who are actually running the practices. There was an event, I'll be careful here. But is the event I was chairing, and there was a part three student, a part two studying for part three, responding to something, saying, well, if practices didn't focus on profit, and almost spat the word out. You know, then maybe they could do more social good. And I've just said, I looked and I said, well, first of all, before we put this to the panel, give me another word for profit. Give me another word. What's another word for profit? I said, because that's got it's that's used pejoratively. I said, How about use the word surplus? You know, any business has to make surplus because you got because a thing called cash flow. And it's like, if you don't understand the basics of that, that's how you go out of business. You have to make profit or surplus. People aren't buying yachts. They're not buying private jets. Most architects, they're basically just been having some reserve at the bank for the ups and downs of fees. I said, you know, I could tell you that the warning signs as an employee you need to look out for if business has got cash flow problems, but it was sort of this kind of, how could you get to that point and be that naive? I mean, when I was talking about an 18 year old, now, Sylvia must be 26 and I said, to put it in perspective, at the age of 26 my dad had been through four years of a World War, and, you know, he grew up fairly quick. And this sort of almost senses a bit of an extended childhood. Almost sense a feeling I could get, a feeling it is like that they want to be protected from the realities. And the fact is, it's Darwinian, and it always has been, and it always will be. And the people who can see I want to get ahead here, I have to basically leapfrog over people who don't want to think this way. Yeah, then, to be honest, that's what I'd have thought. I'd have thought they're just people that can run past or jump over. So it's this feeling somehow that people have got to come in and fix it for adults.
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33:26Rion Willard
No, exactly. I mean, this is a a kind of message that we try and put out here on a bear way of you know, we can be the authors of our own destiny. And really the if we've got massive complaints about freeze and our salaries, then we need to, we need to take ownership over it. And if you're owning a business, okay, you've got some you've got some direct agency there to be able to control your fees, because you're the one setting them. And if you're a an employed architect, you also have some agency in your salaries, but you need to learn what is controlling your salaries, which is fees and yeah, and how to provide more economic value to the company that you're working at. And, you know, and it's interesting here at boa I know I work with both employees and with business owners, having that conver, having that conversation, but it's, you know, that's, that's that individual ownership over it, and not waiting for somebody else from above to come down and help us, that that will hurt us, that that wanting, you know, the RBA, to come and save us that will hurt us.
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34:36Speaker 1
It's not their job. Yeah, that they're a professional body. They can facilitate things, and they can identify, they can identify trends and needs, and they can find ways to help profession do that. But all these are separate businesses. It's not, this isn't the, you know, like I say they're not a trade union, but I still, I'm not, you know, I'm not. I'm not trying to sort of completely defend the Riba in this one, but, but I can see the point that what my viewpoint is we need to put resources into addressing these as a profession. And the only vehicle there is is the Riba. There is no other vehicle so, and if they're doing things like guerrilla tactics, for instance. So they're already contributing to this. So in other words, and that they sending advice notes out on salaries, then they're already talking about it. What stop is going further. But it's funny, because, you know, the you know me I've worked on, you know, spend a lot of time in consumer and and I'm a big believer in story selling as a way to increase value, because obviously, of marketing, you may go price or differentiation. I always say, like, architects have it 50% more difficult than marketers, because markets, markets have got price and differentiation. Where architects, who've got commodity firms and delights. So you so you got, you know, so that could Vitruvian principle of marketing. So let's put them together and have a five stage Vitruvius. You know, commodity, firmness, delight, price or differentiation. What is it? But it's kind of, to me, it's like there are some fairly obvious moves, because there's loads of work out there done by Kahneman. I mean, Rory Sutherland. Do you interview the fantastic podcast? I love that. He's really good at this. And you know his is, he is like the modern guru, isn't it? He's astonishingly funny as well, and his insights. But you have to look for different ways strategies to increase value. And that happens everywhere. And people, as Kahneman sort of said, is that your people make emotional decisions for rational reasons. Okay, so what you got to get them into a position where they really want something, and then they'll find ways to argue it's worth that extra bit more, or 25% more, because that's what I want, you know, it's like, like these things, right? Apple iPhones, I mean, ludicrously expensive things. I mean, we're talking on a Mac now, which is ludicrously expensive, and yet people go, Oh, yeah, but it's so intuitive. Well, Android, isn't I mean, it's like, no, you just like the Apple, it's got cache, it's got kudos. It says creative, it's got spins, yeah, yeah, it's got stasis. And it's, you know, it's like, the, you know, the Jaguar kind of situation at the minute, you know, it's like, it's all emotion, okay, then even show a car, because, like, you know, people with pom poms on their ankles, sort of looking, looking askance to the camera. You know, deeply inspired by Eurovision or Boney. M, I think actually Euro trash, like, yeah, yeah, exactly, euros copy, nothing except Euro trash, bony M, Eurovision, you know, every, every you know Rona Martin's laughing from the 60s. I mean, you know, it's like, do me a favor, but, but, so I gave them an example at this I thought about sales, and say, Okay, how do you take a product that's worth X, and let's just say it's a consumer product. And how do you figure, how do I? How do I, how do I get to charge 4x for the same thing, exactly the same thing, just by packaging it differently. And the way you do that is you tell a story that resonates in their minds and in the context of the way they think. And I always think to myself, to have 50% of more than 50% of architects fees are in through one of housing extensions and alterations, then you're dealing with consumers. That's because that's a B to C thing. Now, if their point is, we don't want to pay too much to be architect, I mean, why are we exploring areas of like, how to destroy value in your house? Good? How to how to give yourself a long term problem? It just strikes me, we're not examining some of the psychological aspects of, I mean, obviously there's a business aspects about, you know, you build your business on work eternal way. But also, you know, the subtle emotional triggers, psychological triggers, and there's a lot of work on this. I mean, Nobel Prize winning guys like Thaler and Hahnemann and, you know, and you know, I can see Rory Sutherland ended up, if he wrote, If he did a PhD in it, he probably get a Nobel Prize for it. You know, when it
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39:35Rion Willard
was interesting, and when I, when I spoke with him, and we were discussing, like, selling sustainability, for example. And he was using the example of Elon Musk and Tesla, and how he's how Musk is so good at making he's just making sustainability cool. And you know the kind of idea of and the idea of novelty and kind of having a sustainable product and then having something. Ridiculous and unnecessary about it, like bulletproof glass in the Yeah, in the in the in the in the cyber track windows or or all the in the dog mode in the Tesla as well. There was kind of these novelty factors that kind of just make an object very seductive and and appealing, and it being a very interesting way of, kind of associating that with this other sustainable agenda, and elevating it and and wrapping it up in these things that that humans get emotional about. And that's all for now. Please stay tuned for part two of this brilliant, inspirational conversation with Paul Eddin, hey,
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40:41Enoch Sears
Enoch Sears here, and I have a request, since you are a listener here of the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of, to bring it back to empower you as an architect and a designer. One thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast, simply because it helps other architects stand for more of their value spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together, so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here my my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast. And as an expression of our sincere thanks, we would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit, but more importantly, we'll give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that. After you leave us a review, send an email to support at Business of architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training, you'll discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wished they would have known 20 years ago.
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42:15Rion Willard
Hello, listeners, 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. At businessof architecture.com the views expressed on this show by my guests do not represent those of the host and I make no representation. Promise, guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you be unstoppable. You.
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