589: Why Most Architecture Firms Fail at Succession Planning with Rion Willard: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

589: Why Most Architecture Firms Fail at Succession Planning with Rion Willard

Enoch Sears44min

Rion Willard

00:00

The entrepreneurial spirit really comprises of the ability to have a vision and understand where the firm is going, and then the ability to communicate and lead other people's into that vision. Hello and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your host, Ryan Willard, and today I'm going to be doing a podcast which is basically mapping out a blueprint for legacy so succession planning in an architecture firm, this is something that we hear more and more of in architecture practices, and there's been a fair amount written on the topic. And many of the clients that we work with here at Business of Architecture on our smart practice program have begun the process of succession planning, and we've met many businesses in different parts of their journey. So practices that are just thinking about it so that they're kind of identifying leaders and partners, we work with practices who have just brought on new leaders. We've worked with practices where they're created, the legacy plan, they've executed on it, and then things haven't gone to plan, or hasn't turned out the way that they were expecting it to go, and they want to undo certain things. So we've also been involved with firm owners who have had various struggles there, or they brought on partners who realized they didn't want to become a partner, and being a partner isn't what they had imagined or what they'd hoped for. Or there have been partners who have fallen out, and there's like a 5050, split of the business, and you get a stalemate situation, which, again, very difficult scenarios to handle, but we're going to talk a little bit about how to avoid some of those, and have an exploration here of succession planning, and put together a little guide for firm owners through the common pitfalls, the rewarding potential of a well thought out succession plan. We'll look at some of the essential principles and practical steps for a smooth transition, and we'll also point towards some insights that we've seen from other firms to help firm owners secure their own firm's future and preserve its culture.

Speaker 1

02:19

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Rion Willard

04:00

We are looking for architect developer stories for the Business of Architecture podcast. So are you an architect developer with valuable insights to share? We're always on the lookout for passionate voices in the industry to join us on the Business of Architecture podcast. If you're ready to share your journey, lessons, strategies with our global audience. We'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us to explore being a guest on our show and help inspire other architect developers on their path. We'd be interested in hearing your story, whether you're at the very beginning of your development story, or whether you have $100 million portfolio of projects already in the bag, completed, we'd like to hear from you if you're working with the developers, or that you've developed a number of small houses, or you're working at a larger scale. So it's very important to to think about succession planning. It's not a five. Fast activity, it's going to be something that's probably going to take around five to 10 years. Many firms actually delay succession planning because they don't want to think about it. Often the financial success of the business has been very precarious anyway, so there's been an up and down. There's all sorts of insecurities at play with firm owners that don't want to expose people to the money side of it, or sometimes it can have be a bit of a reactive thing. People just want to suddenly get out of their of their businesses. But firms that are very successful, that delay their succession planning risk the future stability of the asset of the organization. So we're gonna have a look at some of these problems. And I guess the first one really is uncertain leadership so many practice owners, perhaps they've been doing it themselves for a long period of time, are very anxious about where the business is going to go, so they become very uncertain in their own leadership. There isn't a vision framework that's ever been mapped out. There isn't a five or 10 year idea, ideology of where the business wants to go. Sometimes the businesses have been run quite reactively. So again, like I was like, I was saying that sort of insecurity breeds out an uncertainty in leadership and the the firm owner can be unclear and unprepared for where the business is going, which then means making choices over over the next generation of leaders very difficult. It also makes being a leader in that firm very unattractive, so not uncommon that we'll see, you know, business owners who have spent their entire careers really grinding and doing the 6070, hour weeks for you know, year after year after year after year, it also unintentionally creates a kind of idea in the office of the younger generation going, I don't want to do that. So there is a reluctance also to people wanting to take the lead or take the reins of a practice. Again, the uncertain leadership will manifest itself in poor financial performance, a lack of vision of where the practice is going, the making the you know, it's not clear what the rewards are for doing such a such a thing. And again, we kind of end up seeing this reluctance for leadership from the next generation. Poor succession planning will also lead to a loss of legacy and culture. And I this is, I think this one is very painful to see, certainly with some of you know, there's been businesses in the UK recently where we've had extraordinary architects who have created an amazing legacy of architectural work, and they have not had a succession plan in place, or maybe some of the factors that I was just talking about, there's been a reluctance of younger generations to take over the reins of a practice, and again, we've got to put that onto The leadership of a firm of why that's happening. And we end up seeing businesses end up just getting complete, closing up shop and disbanding which is, which is, which is very sad. And you know, we end up losing the very distinct culture. We lose the client relationships. We lose all the things that have made that firm unique. We lose the mission of that organization. And you know, this is one of the problems from poor succession planning. The third is operational disruption. So if poor succession plan planning happens, we can see a sudden leadership change occurring, which can cause many problems inside of an organization in terms of how people are interacting with each other, how the teams are communicating with each other, how there has been a hierarchy that's been in place. We can see client relationships floundering, and we can also see team members morale diminishing, and again, productivity will begin to will begin to drop, and we can see a firm's actually ability to be able to win work start to reduce. Because the pipeline starts to dry up. It's, you know, it's not uncommon that we'll see in mergers and acquisitions. For example, when you've got large corporate acquisitions happening and one large firm buys up an entrepreneurially led firm and they replace the leader of that company very quickly and try and install their new leadership. And there's a real culture clash, which then means that the business that's just been acquired then fails to operate. Okay? So this would all be part of the due diligence of an acquiring firm, and whether it's an acquiring firm or younger leaders acquiring a business, which is the most sort of common scenario that happens in an architecture firm, this transition needs to be planned out. Okay, that's why we like to have a long sort of overlap between existing leaders and the new leaders, so knowledge and wisdom can be exchanged. There can be a training process in place. It can be clear in terms of what the partner role actually entails, what some of the business operations and knowledge and what they're about, that there's been some good thought in actually identifying people who have got the psychological makeup and desire to be a partner. Being a partner of an architecture firm is not the height of of everybody's career. It can be a very risky position. It also requires a number of skill set domains, which we'll talk about later, which are outside of the architectural skill set. And I think that's really, really, really important. Just because you're a fantastic designer doesn't mean that you are going to be well suited to running an architecture firm. Another issue that can emerge from poor succession planning, obviously, is the financial instability. So there's a lot of financial risks with poor succession planning. So cash flow obviously can be interrupted when we've got leaders buying out the firm, and they're on some sort of deferred compensation plan, ie, so they've got younger leaders of of an architecture practice, they there's a value attributed to the company. So there's been a valuation process that the firm has gone through. Everyone agrees on that the new leaders of the firm, the younger architects, typically, they are now buying in to the practice. They're buying ownership at the practice so they can become a partner,

Rion Willard

12:41

if there's a system of deferred compensation, which usually happens in architecture firms, in a lot of other companies, like lawyers or in banking, for example, in the finance world, you'll you'll see the new partners have to take out loans. They have to use their own personal finance to buy into the firm. But that can be risky, certainly for architects, because the salaries tend to be a lot lower. So we do we often see deferred compensation plans emerging. So basically, the profit that would be going to the new partner that gets used to buy out the firm from the departing partners, let's say, but that can cause cash flow problems. It can cause financial instability to the rest of the firm, if not balanced out and thought and well thoughtfully planned, it can be very difficult for the younger partners, because now they suddenly realize all their profit, all of their money for the next 10 years is being tied up and going to somebody who's retiring. Essentially, we can also see the issue there when the younger partners suddenly realize, well, what is it that I've just bought so we often see the younger partners not being financially astute and literate, and they don't realize what it is they just purchased. They don't realize that they're becoming leaders of a firm. They don't realize that they're becoming business people, and they suddenly find themselves in this contractual agreements to be buying out an asset, and it's only when they start to see the numbers going and also, you know, when we've seen things in the past where, you know, hard times on a practice like COVID or an economic downturn can mean that that buyout process, that deferred compensation process, now gets prolonged, or it gets delayed because there wasn't enough profit in the first place to be buying out the partners. So that also means that, you know, again, the kind of financial instability of the practice kind of comes to comes to light, and if the business hasn't been well run, we can have. Quite a lot of mess that can impact and then trickle down through the rest of the firm. We also see that if it's done poorly, you know, this is going to be difficult to retain the talent that has been nurtured. Okay? So if there's a sudden leadership change, or the leadership change transition hasn't been managed smoothly. You can suddenly find yourself with all your talent just going, we don't want to be working under these people anymore, and they there's a sudden exodus from the practice. Again, very problematic for a firm. We see that sort of thing happen in acquisitions and and mergers where it hasn't been smoothly navigated. So with the smooth leadership transition, a proactive approach to succession will result in a seamless transfer of responsibilities and will maintain the stability of the business if done well, if given the right amount of time, we will see the finances of the business improve. That becomes absolutely brilliant. So, you know, we've got smooth leaders to transition and increased financial stability and growth. So a well planned succession plan, a well planned succession can secure funding sources. It can maintain the cash flow. It can increase client confidence. It can if well marketed as well, we can see, like, you know, if you doing this over a period of time, and there has been thought leadership marketing campaigns installed for all the new leaders. And you've been building up their reputation, reputations. And these people have already got a good sort of standing in the wider architectural world and the construction world, and then the world and the client world that you're operating in. These people now become the owners, the leaders of the of the firm, fantastic. This can actually mean that the business can get a new refresh the perceptions of it can can change it's a growing, expanding company, and we can see the business grow and win more work, preserve preserved firm culture. So the chance to retain and even strengthen the firm's identity, when values and client relationships go across generations, this can be very interesting. So actually seeing firms, you know, firms that have got one leadership operating with another client, with one leadership, and then there's a transition in both those companies and those companies grow together that can enhance and create very deep, long, lasting relationships across generations, that can be very, very successful and create a very stable architecture firm. It's been interesting to see, you know, in the US and in the UK, some of these large starch tech firms who have gone through their succession plans. I know a few, maybe, maybe a year or so ago, I did a an interview with one of the with the journalist who had documented the succession plan of Grimshaw and rshp and some other large UK firms, and here in the US, when we look at place, places like Cobb and stern and what they're going through and how they've managed their succession plans, we can see this preservation of firm culture and the moving away from a single, single person to more of an organization and a more complex kind of identity. Olsen kundig was a very good example of a firm where their partnership has grown. There may be a 350, person firm nowadays, and it's a multi generational organization. That's the kind of identity of it and the brand of it has come quite complex, but is still retained and is well communicated. Succession plan done well, increased staff loyalty and engagement when there's a very visible path to leadership inside of the organization, this becomes very useful. So often we'll see firms struggling with staff retention as a result of there not being a clearly articulated career pathway inside of the firm. So we see this a lot in some of the clients that we, that we work with, that there's, you know, there's, it's great. There's performance reviews that are happening quarterly, having these discussions, and, you know, good leader is able to stir up a. Vision inside of individuals and have them think bigger about their careers and where they're going. But we want to make sure that the business itself has got a framework in place for leaders to be able to rise to the top, and also for the leaders of the firm to be able to identify people who could be fantastic leaders of the of the practice, and that they know what sorts of skills that they're looking to identify. It's not just design skills. I'll keep reiterating this, because I think at the you know, we get design is is massively important, but and certainly with smaller organizations where you can't, where you don't have the ability to have such a large leadership partner team, where you've got financial expertise, you've got HR expertise and business expertise, and you've got your Managing Partner, and then you can have the architects who are like, kind of the prime prize designers. We don't have that breadth of partners. Then you are looking for people who have core abilities competencies in the domains of what a partner needs, and we'll talk about that in just a moment. But we want to make sure that there is a pathway to leadership and that that's discussed, and people can see what it is, and they can locate themselves where they are on their growth and they want to be making x amount of dollars or pounds, then you can have a conversation with them of like, yes, we'd love to be able to pay you that. Here's what we would need for you to be demonstrating in terms of skill sets and experiences. And there's, here are some trainings that we can give you. Here's some trainings we can point you in the right direction of, here's the sorts of things that you should be doing. And there is a pathway to a partnership or or leadership, I think I mentioned already, you know, enhanced reputation and client confidence. So a firm that manages this process well, is strongly communicating, you know, we've got a clear future. It's reassuring to clients. It's strengthening those relationships. And you're building those relationships cross generationally, which, again, just goes to more towards the financial stability of of a practice and the continuing the legacy. So some principles for successful planning. Number one, start early. I think it's very common that we'll see practices try and do this either too quickly.

Rion Willard

22:40

You know, the legal part of it actually getting the partnership agreements in place that don't underestimate how long that technical part of it will take as well. I mean, that could be a year or a year and a half, even, in itself, the valuation process of the firm, and get an agreement and making sure everyone understands what the valuation is. You know, typically we might see, usually we see an architecture firm use one valuer or set of accountants to define what the valuation of the firm is. Everyone agrees on it. And then there's some sort of financial mechanism that's put in place, deferred compensation, or maybe the partners need to go and get a loan, or they remortgage their house, or whatever it is they have to do to buy their shares of the of the firm. But that's again that can take its time. There's time involved in just understanding what the valuation means and how it's comprised and all the different components that are being, you know, kind of considered in that people write books on the valuations of firms, but I'm surprised that how many leaders of architecture practices who have just recent partners who they don't necessarily know what the mechanism is for the valuation of the firm. So if you're in that position, you know it's your responsibility to to really dissect and go into what is causing the valuation of these firms. If we were doing a like, a kind of more traditional merger or an acquisition in business, then we would have, typically, you'd have the, you know, the vendor of the business, with their own valuation team, and then the purchaser with their own valuation of the asset that's about to be acquired. And so then you'd have two different valuations, one on each side, and then the negotiations would begin in the middle. Sometimes architects don't feel comfortable doing that, or there might be a sense of it being adversarial to do that, but I think that the more that the younger leadership understands what the valuation mechanisms are, and they have a say in it, and they're business literate and financially literate, and they can see what what's going on in the business, and they've already had good experience in terms of looking at the financial. As they know what how profit is being defined, and there's a clear understanding of how that's working. They look at the bank accounts, they look at the accounting, they look at the profit and loss, they understand the balance sheets. The more that that is in place for that, certainly for the younger, upcoming leadership, then it just makes the process much, much easier, much, much easier, easier. So again, don't underestimate how long this takes when you can even imagine that process in itself, that being a few years worth of the kind of technical aspects of it, but even before that, just identifying the right people for a leadership position in in your firm is is massively important. And again, it's not going to be purely on design, which I'll go into now, the the core competencies of a partner, we would we would typically break them down. And this was an idea that I've kind of expanded upon from herb cannon, who's based upstate, I think he's in New York, but brilliant CPA, and, you know, he runs a consulting firm that specializes in the transition of architecture firms from a financial perspective, and also to make sure that they're all tuned up, and they can be a valuable asset for both both parties involved. But we were discussing that in his in his interview with myself, and he explained that three competencies that we look towards. Number one is some ability to win the work. Okay, so my perspective winning work is going to include everything from prospecting, lead generation marketing, negotiating, selling, thought leadership, being able to develop a network, being able to close the deals, being able to ensure that the contracts are adhered to and that The terms are in place and everyone understands them, that part of the business that is this is 1/3 of the major competencies that a partner needs to have. You're not You're no longer an architect, you're a business owner, you're a leader in a firm. Okay, so you have a responsibility to make sure that this firm is fed. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be a superb salesperson, but you need to understand enough about it that you can put the right people in positions to go and be bringing you in work. Imagine trying to build a team to design a building, and you've got no idea about anything to do with architecture. Okay, there's going to be a lot of pitfalls and problems that happen. So it I don't accept, and I get very concerned when we've got partners moving into or young partners who are moving becoming partners, and they do not want to win work, they do not want to learn about it. They don't want to learn about marketing. They are indoctrinated with the culture of we just focus on doing great work. You might get away with this for a little bit, right? You might get away from it from a little bit. So you might see some partners move on. Some new partners coming in, and they are just surviving off repeat work from existing clients. Okay, there's going to be a point when there's going to be a want of change in direction, new work, economic hardship that those clients start to dissipate. The leadership at those firms starts to change, and if the relationships haven't been maintained, they disappear. What are you going to do? You've got to be able to have some ability to bring in the work. Sometimes we see this with with new partners. They come on and they haven't. They didn't realize that this is going to be part of their job. And if anything happens very suddenly to the exiting partner, or the exit plan has been very fast on the on the old partners. Way. Then there's a problem.

Rion Willard

29:11

The second competency, obviously, is design and being an architect and understanding, you know, what it is to do a good piece of architecture, and what the kind of creative directorship of the firm looks like, and the design values and those are upheld. But again, in all of these topics, all these competencies, there's high value activities and low value activities relative to the position of partner. So if we're looking at winning work, high value activities would probably be more in the actual closing and then negotiating the developing the network, part of it, the lower value activities might be, you know, in a marketing sense, it might be list building, okay, so you might identify a few people, but then these are sorts of activities. That can easily be delegated to somebody else to be able to and bring a certain level of automation to them. Same within design, there's going to be high level activities that the architect as a partner can can bring, and there's going to be low level design activities. So as a partner, we wouldn't expect you to be drafting and to be changing dates on title blocks, but we would probably expect the partner to be involved in high level concept work, or setting the vision of a prac, of a of a problem, of a project, or being like a design director. So they a design a partner has the ability to better sit down with all the project architects of different projects in the firm, and be able to kind of consult with them as a design advisor on all of these different projects, and the project architect then goes off and executes the consultation from the partner. Okay, that can be a very fulfilling part of of being a partner in that design role, and that would demand some some very good design chops and experience to be able to do that. The third competency is the systems of a practice. Okay? So these are all the things that need to be in place inside of a business to protect the profit that's been made through the successful selling of the project in the first place. So this would be things like your HR systems, your financial systems, being able to measure profitability on each projects and the systems that are in place for communicating profitability and client and budgets for your fees, the systems involved for HR, for hiring, for administration, again, low value work in this context would be you actually building out all of the individual systems yourself. High value would be identifying where there are systems needed and developing a plan and strategy for their implementation. So we've got those three areas of the of what what we expect to see from a partner, in terms of their kind of competencies, ability to win work, ability to do the work, and ability to support the work. And then there's a fourth one called the entrepreneurial spirit. Okay? And this one's perhaps a little bit more difficult to to cultivate in some way, and often we'll find people with entrepreneurial spirit have gone off and set up their own their own businesses. But a well run business will be able to create a spirit of entrepreneurship, and good leaders of architectural firms will be able to create a space in a business that's big enough, that has enough space for people to be able to grow. So the entrepreneurial spirit really comprises of the ability to have a vision and understand where the firm is going, and then the ability to communicate and lead other people's into that vision and having them see something for themselves in the execution of that vision, so that they're motivated and fully enrolled into it. The next principle to look at is on that one vision and goals. So it's important that there is a long term plan for the firm's future. So when everyone understands what the goals and directions are, that there's values that have been defined, there's a mission in place, a clear objective, or something that's inspiring, a B, hag, we often call it, and there's a pathway forward, or at least some options of how to define that pathway, if it's a really big goal, and no one's ever done it before. Another principle to consider is, again, using the framework that we've just outlined of identify of the core competencies of a potential of partners, then the current leadership needs to be able to use that framework and start identifying people who have got those who've got either those skill sets naturally or they have the kind of personality to be able to be very good at them. So for example, winning work, networking, it's good to keep an eye out on Who are some of the more natural communicators in the in the firm. They may be more extroverted, they may be more introverted. It really, it really depends. But that ability to be able to make friends, make relationships, to be able to inspire, to influence, to enroll other people. That is a key, key part of identifying potential leaders. There may be partners that have a particular design expertise and magnificence. Okay, great again. We want to be considering here, like, how big is the partnership team going to be? Do you want to have each of those core competencies evenly spread out amongst your leadership team? Or do you have the capability to have enough partners in the firm where you can do that? Or is it going to be a much you know you're going to have each. Partner needs to have those three core competencies, the leadership as a leadership team as a whole, needs to have them. How you distribute them is up to you. Want to make sure the next principle here make sure that there are key processes and systems that have been documented again. So if done well, we would expect that the incoming leadership team, if they're business literate, they would be assessing the processes and the knowledge and the project histories and the client relationships and the firm's performance and how performance is managed, that'll be part of them looking at where, what's missing, what's in place, and all part and parcel of the valuation of the of the firm. If that's done well, then we'd expect to see the firm being more valuable. Transparent communication, so the importance of being able to foster trust and ensure that everybody knows what's happening with this sort of process, certainly the leaders that are involved that there is an opening up about the firm's details, the firm's his history, financial past, all of that needs to be discussed, laid bare, so people know what it is that they're actually purchasing. And then there needs to be communication to the rest of the team, done in a strategic manner over the transition of leadership. And of course, creating a transition timeline for how long this is all going to going to take would be very advisable. So some next steps, or pathway forward, if you're on this process, I would suggest a form of succession audit, which means the firm owners take stock of where they are right now in their succession journey, and assess what's working, what's not working, what leadership gaps do they have? What needs does the business have? Where are things not being delegated? Where they need to be delegated? So you can understand effectively where you are in the process. Number two would be to engage key stakeholders. So this would be owners, to start involving leadership teams and partners and even clients to ensure that everyone is aligned and invested in the transition. I would also say the third one here is very important for business owners to invest in leadership development, so we recommend starting leadership training programs very early on, and mentorship programs early on, these can be with the help of an external source, some from my Business of Architecture. We run a number of different leadership development programs for associates who are moving into becoming partners of firms. You can develop your own ones internally, so there might be mentorship from existing partners. So each existing partner then has a mentee.

Rion Willard

38:08

There's lots of different ways that this can be, can be done, but actually explicit leadership development and training and business training and having that, you know, for people who are have been identified as potential leaders, starting that early is a great investment. We would also advise, for the technical part of this, engaging with financial experts, so you'll need a CPA of some description, or somebody who does valuations on firms. There's a number of specific people who are specialists in the valuations of architecture and design firms. They will be very useful to get hold of. You're going to need a number of lawyers, so legal advisors, considering all the protections for all parties, you'd want to have some guidance from the CPAs on different buyout structures, how the firm can be organized, and how to do that. The tax implications are there. We've seen some very interesting structures that can reduce the various kind of tax implications to make it a nice, seamless process. We would also suggest that engaging with legal advisors or lawyers to write out the partnership agreements be a very important thing to begin as a fantastic book called The Partnership charter by David Gage, which one of our clients here actually recommended to me, and we've used that quite a lot here. That's a great outline on how to, you know, start out on a new business relationship, on how to enhance existing ones. But it's a very thoughtfully written book, and it's very easy for you to understand. So recommend getting yourself a copy of that. Also just setting up a structure for regular reviews and adjustments is also very important. So the firm owners, the incoming leaders, set out a weekly meeting or a monthly meeting so that they are able to review and make any adjustments, they can discuss the valuations, and they can move forward. So if you're interested in succession planning, or it's something that you're about to engage in with your team, you're looking at leadership development, you're looking at valuations, get in contact with us here at Business of Architecture and talk to one of our team here if there's something that would be appropriate for you or a fit onto the smart practice program that's all for me. Take care and that's a wrap.

Speaker 1

40:54

Hey, Enoch Sears here, and I have a request, since you are a listener here of the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of. To bring it back to empower you as an architect and a designer, one thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast simply because it helps other architects stand for more of their value. Spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together, so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast. And as an expression of our sincere thanks, we would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit. But more importantly, we'll give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that. After you leave us a review, send an email to support at Business of architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training, you'll discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wished they would have known 20 years ago, and the other 1% well, they just didn't even know that. They didn't know. Head over to iTunes and leave us a review now and now, a word from today's sponsor a while ago, I began to hear reports of a company that was helping some of our clients build remote teams. We looked into it more closely and discovered the company, world teams, that was helping small architectural practitioners build remote teams that were both capable and qualified. I was intrigued by another business that addressing one of the critical pain points for small architectural practices, which is the ability to grow and shrink a team effectively, to be able to handle higher workflow without having to staff up significantly, and also being very sensitive about labor costs. World teams is built to address these issues. World teams is a small but mighty company that helps architectural practices build high performing remote teams quickly and efficiently, saving you the headache of sorting resumes and interviewing under qualified candidates. World teams operates in your time zone and prioritizes near native English speakers, ensuring clear and efficient communication with your remote team members. They have flexible contracts so you can adjust your team size as your needs evolve. Additionally, you're connected directly with your skilled professionals, which fosters trust and collaboration. And world teams helps you reduce your operating costs without compromising the quality that is so important to a practice. To download a free guide for building a remote team for a small architectural practice, go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. That's one word. Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. As a reminder, sponsorship is not an endorsement, and you must do your own due diligence before entering into any business relationship. Go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams.

Rion Willard

44:19

The views expressed on this show by my guest 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. Do.

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