Business by Design: Organize Your Business Beautifully Using 6 Proven Principles of Design Vision, mission, goals, hiring, culture, business systems, planning. These are all critical elements of success. Do you want to organize all of these into a successful business plan? Can you use the creative side of your brain to see your firm from a different perspective? This week on EntreArchitect, Business by Design: Organize Your Business Beautifully Using 6 Proven Principles of Design. Jane Walton is a published author, a public speaker and a trained executive coach with a masters degree in Human Resources Management training and development. She’s developed and facilitated numerous programs focused on leadership, team effectiveness and management specific to architecture firms. You can hear her entire origin story on EA088: How to Avoid Burnout as an Architect with Jane Walton [Podcast]. Taking inspiration from the art world, Jane will discuss how to design your firm beautifully by utilizing the basic principles of design organization: focal point, contrast, scale, unity, movement and rhythm. Designing your firm is the perfect balance of vision, partnership, and execution.  How can architects solve some of the issues they’re dealing with? First, figure out the focal point. For architects, they really need to think that through. They may want to do healthcare or civic residential, but take time to think through that. Is your firm doing what you say you want to be doing? Some firms say they’re on the cutting edge of technology, but if you want to be in that space you have to invest properly to get the level of talent to be able to do that. For what it’s going to take to reach your goals, is that where you want to be? Be clear and intentional about where you want to be. Next, go back and look at the contrast: What are your clients expectations? What is the market like? What are industry conditions that will support or not support your focal point? Once you have your focal point, what do you do? Test it and figure out if the clients understand what you’re trying to do. Is your focal point something that people are going to be excited about?  Figure out what’s going on with the competition and how you compare to that. How do you build an organization around your focal point? Once you know who you are and what you are, what you want to do and how you want to do it, then you can build a team around those concepts. Sometimes you get to the point where you have to consider what your life will be like if you have 20 employees and decide if that’s really what you want for your focal point. For some people, it’s better to stay a sole practitioner and accept the realities of what that type of business entails. How can you create unity in your firm? Unity is the elements have have a logical relationship to the progression and results. For example, finding a project, concept, to design to execution, the unity piece needs to be understood. What does communication look like? What is your pace? What expectations do you have? Learn from companies like Zappos and Southwest who hire the right people from the start and are clear about their culture and expectations to create the best teams. How can you find your rhythm? Rhythm is recognizing that we have the work to do, but asking what other things we need to have in place. Are there monthly meetings to course correct if

How to Develop a Powerful Owner Architect Agreement for Your Architecture Firm If you purchase the Hybrid Proposal Digital Course TODAY – including complete documents ready for you to edit for your small firm – we will throw in a FREE bonus including access to the Construction Management for Small Firm Architects Course and the GetFocused Productivity Course for Small Firm Architects . That’s over $600 for only $197. The offer ends Friday, February 2, 2018 at 11:59PM ET! Click HERE to receive BOTH the video course AND the complete template package that's ready to edit and help you sign more projects and make more money today! About 10 years ago, Mark was inspired by a talk to create his own owner architect agreement, one that works for his small firm. It needed to be easy to understand, look friendly, and be an integral part of his firm’s simple sales system. How can we go from prospect to project as effectively and efficiently as possible? After a decade of slow evolution, it’s the best small firm agreement. This week at EntreArchitect Podcast, How to Develop a Powerful Owner Architect Agreement for Your Architecture Firm. Note: EntreArchitect strongly advises that you have your attorney and insurance company review all of your legal documents. Why is it called a “hybrid proposal”? It’s both a proposal and an agreement. Typically, architects send out a letter of proposal defining what they understand the project to be. If they are ready to move forward, the architect prepares a legal agreement for the prospect to review and agree to. Mark created the Hybrid Proposal to condense both actions into one simple step. Next, Mark developed the hybrid fee with gives the client a flat fee and a percentage fee. The Four Parts of the Hybrid Proposal Cover Letter The cover letter is a simple form letter. It has a logo and a return address, but the intent is to explain to clients what we’re going to do and give them a call to action as to what next steps to take. The next part explains what was discussed at the meeting and what will happen next. All of this is malleable, but is the first step. Next, the prospective client can sign and initial the proposal and return with the initial payment to the firm. Proposal This six-page document is incredibly user friendly. Use your design skills to make it look appealing. Make it clear and easy to understand. Do you want to be more efficient and make more money? Find a target market and create a template proposal that fits your needs. Then you can use it over and over again! We also get into the different phases of architecture, including the pre design and architectural services. Explain the process you’re going to go through to execute your client’s project. EntreArchitect also includes construction administration as another phase of their process and fee. An initial payment is taken up front and held as a credit until the final payment. The hybrid language says that compensation for basic architectural services is a stipulated sum fee per the attached compensation schedule.  After schematic design, we know the scope and the budget, and we can make the project based on our stipulated sum. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just start confirming that you’re understanding what they want. Terms and Conditions This two page part is intentionally short to make it...

Construction Administration for Architects is NOT an Option A very popular topic around EntreArchitect is the role of the architect in the construction phase.  The number of firms providing architecture services and forfeiting Construction Administration is surprising. One member of The EntreArchitect Community recently shared, “I need to get better at selling my clients on construction administration. Most think they don’t need it and refuse it when I offer. I had a recent client back out on the service because my drawings were essentially too well done. Once they saw the final drawings, they decided the contractor could handle it without my involvement.” This week at EntreArchitect Podcast, Construction Administration for Architects is NOT an Option. During the past few years, we’ve began to discuss, as a profession, taking back the process.  The goal is to be viewed once again as the leaders of the construction industry. To make this happen, we must literally take control of our projects and lead the process from beginning to end. Construction Administration is not an option to be offered as an additional service, it’s an integral part of the architecture process. Do you need to get better at selling your clients on construction administration? Imagine a surgeon preparing for surgery and then handing it over to someone else to execute, or a lawyer spending months preparing a prosecution and then heading back to the office to prepare for a new case before the trial is over. It’s no different for architects. We spend months preparing a design, we work our way through three levels of increasingly difficult development and documenting exactly how a structure is to be built. How can we give it away? We’re responsible for the health, safety and welfare for the creations we make and we’re legally liable for what’s constructed from our designs. It’s our responsibility as licensed professionals to observe the construction of our designs and confirm that they are being built as we designed them. Fivecat Studio Architecture provides Construction Administration on every project from a storage shed to a completely new construction. How do we do it? We’re a full-service architecture firm. We help our clients organize from their first ideas of the projects all the way through the end of construction. Most clients have no idea how our process actually works, and yours don’t either. If you offer a service as optional, a client will look at it as such. Fivecat Studio proposes one fee that includes Construction Administration as a part of the overall service. If a client asks if they’ll work without construction administration, Mark and Annmarie let them know it isn’t an option for them. 8 Reasons Why You Provide Construction Administration We lead weekly project meetings and review the progress of construction.We’re there to monitor things and support them in answering questions throughout the process. We confirm that the contractor is executing the project as per the design and specifications.Our client just went through a whole process that involved a lot of time and money, so they want the project done the correct way. We’re available to quickly resolve unforeseen issues and unexpected conditions so construction progress isn’t delayed.Time = money, and, in our clients’ mind, having an experienced professional to walk through that

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Every Small Firm Architect Should Read This Book Fivecat Studio Architecture launched in 1999, and Mark discovered a book that changed the way he viewed business. It helped him realize that running a successful architecture firm required so much more than designing great architecture. Inside the owner of every small firm exists a battle among the entrepreneur, the manager and the technician. If we don’t attend to the needs of each one, our firms are destined for failure. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Every Small Firm Architect Should Read This Book. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber inspired Mark to build Fivecat Studio Architecture as a franchise prototype. Even though they knew selling their business systems as a franchise was never a goal, it was still important. Those systems have allowed them to thrive and have given them the tools needed to balance the requirements of the firm with the responsibilities of their family. This book inspired Mark to work on his business rather than in his business. Since 1999, Mark and Annmarie have experienced the startup pains of infancy, the hard-earned successes of adolescence, and the launch of a new virtual business model. Part 1 Michael E. Gerber defines the E-Myth as the entrepreneurial myth and discusses how small businesses are often the result of entrepreneurial seizures. What does that mean? “The technician suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure takes the work he loves to do and turns it into a job.” Have YOU done that? How many architects do you know who have launched their own firms with the goal to do it better than the firms they worked for? The three phases of business are infancy, adolescence and maturity. It’s important to build a mature company right from the beginning. “A mature company is founded on a broader perspective, an entrepreneurial perspective, a more intelligent point of view about building a business that works not because of you, but without you. Because it starts that way, it’s more likely to continue that way. Therein the true difference between an adolescent company, where everything is left up to chance, and a mature company, where there is a vision against which the present is shaped.” Part 2 Gerber introduces the concept of the franchise prototype and working on your business and not in it. He encourages the creation of systems, and the predictable results and happy clients that come from them. “The

Walking the Talk of Equity by Design Sometime in the next few weeks, the AIA San Francisco Equity by Design comittee will launch it’s third Equity in Architecture Survey and distribute the findings from their previous survey. Check it out and take it, because it will affect everyone in the profession of architecture. Equity means that all people, regardless of their socioeconomic, racial, or ethnic grouping, have fair and just access to the recourses and opportunities needed to thrive. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Rosa Sheng is Walking the Talk of Equity by Design. Background Rosa is a respected designer, architect, thought leader and innovator with over 23 years of experience. She’s led a variety of award winning and internationally acclaimed projects. As founding chair of Equity by Design and AIA San Francisco Chapter president, Rosa has led two Equity in Architecture surveys and authored AIA National Resolution 15-1 in 2015 and served on the Equity in Architecture Commission from 2016-2017. She’s presented on why equity matters for everyone nationally and abroad, and since she was last on the podcast, Equity by Design has been featured in Architect magazine, Architectural Record, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and on the TEDx stage in Philadelphia. After 20 years at the San Francisco office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, she recently joined SmithGroupJJR. Now, more than ever, a foundation of equitable practice and what that truly means is ever so more important not just in architecture, but in society as a whole. Equity minimizes barriers to maximize success. It’s not just what’s fair and equal, it’s a mindset of “we first” instead of “me first”. The 2016 Equity in Architecture Survey will be out soon, and the key findings started out with career pinch points and added career dynamics. While career pinch points happen once during your career, career dynamics happen throughout your career, like work/live balance, having a break from architecture, and pay equity. Equity by Design has also had a lot of great reports written by Annelise Pitts. For example, pay equity relates to how we’re comparing tings on the concept of temporal flexibility: you’re only as valuable as the hours you’re perceived to be working in the office verses your influence and impact beyond the physical hours you’re in the office. In this paradigm of how we should work, what is our value as architects? Were there any big surprises with the last survey that’s about to release? Burnout engagement was a new topic to the 2016 survey. Someone’s access to a senior leader in a firm, having friendships at work, seeing a clear pathway to advancement, and doing work that is meaningful to longterm career goals shows a huge impact on whether someone thrives. Does the survey address the community of small firm architects? The survey did look at sole practitioners and small firm architects, but they could use help to expand the pool. Of the 8,000, about 600 were sole practitioners. Hopefully more small firms and sole practitioners participate in the survey in the future! How have you applied some of these things to your new firm? The irony is that the last thing Rosa was...

We’re Building a New House for Our Family We’re building a new house for our family! I’m going to share our process and our progress with you – right here – at EntreArchitect Podcast. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, We’re Building a New House! Last fall, Mark LePage and Annmarie McCarthy purchased a lot on a subdivision in Weddington, North Carolina. Mark and Annmarie are husband and wife, and also partners at Fivecat Studio in Westchester County, New York. About 20 years ago, several of their family coincidentally moved from the New York metro area to North Carolina, just outside the city of Charlotte. Both Mark and Annmarie’s parents still live in the New York metro area, and have been a huge part in helping them raise their children while they were building their careers. Being close to New York City allows their family the convenience of visiting as often as they choose, and provides a fantastic client base for their high-end residential architecture firm. There are many opportunities that living in Westchester county affords them. However, there are also opportunities that living in North Carolina would bring too. They would have business contacts, since both of Annmarie’s brothers are in construction, Mark’s older brother is a photographer, and his younger brother is a high-end residential real estate broker in the Lake Norman region just north of Charlotte. Over the years, they’ve gone through the list of pros and cons, and have found that the pros of staying in Westchester have always outweighed the cons. This past summer, something big changed. After almost fifty years of living it the house that Annmarie grew up in, Annmarie’s parents surprised everyone by buying a home in South Carolina and moving within 4 months. Though they wanted their kids to go to great schools and they wanted to be close to both sets of parents, they knew that with their kids growing up and family moving far away, they had more flexibility to make other decisions. When they were freed up to look at moving, they didn’t find any homes that met their requirements as architects! Most of what’s available is being built by mega-developers, which would be a hard transition from a cottage in the woods of upstate New York. They were left with no choice… It’s time to build a new house!  They found the perfect plot of land in one of the best school districts in the state of North Carolina. They’re going to make the move slowly, taking time to build and uproot their entire family, including allowing their oldest, James, the opportunity to finish his senior year in Westchester. There’s so much in store! Follow Mark’s personal Instagram @markrlepage to see the progress. Question: Have you built your own home? Share your story! Visit our Platform Sponsors Gusto is making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for small firm architects. Get an exclusive, limited time detail. Sign up today and get three months free.  Visit EntreArchitect.com/Gusto and claim your free three months today! Freshbooks is the easy way to send invoices, manage expenses, and track your time. Access...

Top 5 Most Popular Episodes for EntreArchitect Podcast in 2017 The EntreArchitect community is growing larger and more powerful every day, and this podcast has seen the results. The EntreArchiect podcast is now being downloaded more than 30,000 times per month. The progress we&#8217;re making is no doubt directly related to you, the EntreArchitect Community. Episode 200 is the final episode of 2017 and there are so many great things coming in 2018. Focus on the things you have control over. There are only a handful of things that we have direct influence over. Work to ensure that you maximize your impact on the things that matter most. If you adopt these three words as your mantra &#8211; Love, Learn, and Share what you know &#8211; next year will certainly be your best year yet. This week at EntreArchitect Podcast, the Top 5 Most Popular Episodes for EntreArchitect Podcast in 2017.  #5 with 5988 downloads in 2017 EA175: Michael Kilkelly The Entrepreneur Architect Series Michael Kilkelly is a principal at Space Command, an architecture and consulting firm in Middletown, Connecticut. He&apos;s also the founder of ArchSmarter.com, a website dedicated to helping architects work smarter not harder. Michael has received his bachelor of architecture from Norwich University and his masters of science, design and computation from MIT. Previously he was an associate at Gehry Partners in LA where he worked on several high profile design projects including New York by Gehry and the Guggenheim. He writes regularly about architecture on ArchSmarter, Arch Daily and Architect Magazine. Connect with Michael online at ArchSmarter.com or email him at [email protected]. You can also find him on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Want to be a guest on The Entrepreneur Architect podcast series? Connect with us on any social media platform or email [email protected]! #4 with 6025 downloads How to Get Started as an Architect Developer (Best of EntreArchitect Podcast) <img loading="lazy" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-10720"...

Using Emotions to Market Your Architecture Firm Our prospective clients learn with their heads but decide with their hearts. After years of research and gathering information, often, when a client chooses to work with an architect, they simply go with their feelings. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Using Emotions to Market Your Architecture Firm.  Have you encounter a situation where emotions take over and a decision is made with someone&#8217;s heart? You&#8217;ve probably seen it happen with yourself and your own clients. &#8220;In his book, Descartes Error, Antonio Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, argues that emotion is a necessary ingredient to almost all decisions. When we are confronted with a decision, emotions from previous, related experiences affix values to the options we are considering. These emotions create preferences which lead to our decision.&#8221; Why is storytelling so important? When developing a marketing strategy, stories trigger memories and feelings. Stories evoke emotions and attach memories and feelings of things you&#8217;ve experienced. The 4 Fundamentals of Emotional Marketing: Knowing who you serve matters. Some architects don&#8217;t want to have a target market, but without knowing who you serve you can&#8217;t figure out how to emotionally connect with them. Pick a target so that you can learn more about them and connect best with their community. Where are they? What makes them happy? What are they trying to achieve? Sensorial experiences matter. Think beyond the traditional description of your services and develop strategies and services that are experienced with every sense. Can you start using technologies like virtual reality to allow your clients to actually walk into a house or building you&#8217;ve designed? Imagine the senses they would experience. An imaginative approach matters. We use our imaginations all the time. When providing products and services in new ways using imagination, we trigger something in our clients&#8217; minds. What if our proposals and legal agreements were beautiful, creative, and easy to read? Manage the emotional experience through your imagination. The words we use matter. They will cause our clients to feel one way or the other. Are you designing a house or creating a home? They say the same thing, but one is more functional and technical, another is filled with feeling and love. Your spoken words when you first meet a client make a unique impression. The words on your website aren&#8217;t just a portfolio, they help show who you are. Mark&#8217;s marketing book suggestions: Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People by Marc Gobe Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping&#8211;Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond by Paco Underhill Visit our Platform Sponsors Freshbooks is the easy way to send...

How to Overcome the Fear of Growing Beyond You as a Small Firm Architect For years, Sheri teetered back and forth between staying small and practicing as a small practitioner or making plans for growth and executing toward a bigger future. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, How to Overcome the Fear of Growing Beyond You as a Small Firm Architect with Sheri Scott of Springhouse Architects.  Background Sheri is a member of EntreArchitect, but her and Mark connected online a long time ago and have been supporting one another as architects for a while. As a founder and principal at Springhouse Architects,  Sheri&#8217;s mission is to lead clients through the building process with the clients in control and Springhouse as their guide, advocate, and ally. With over 20 years of experience in residential architecture, Sheri brings knowledge and confidence to every custom home project. She&#8217;s a graduate of the University of Cincinnati and has her NCARB license. Sheri&#8217;s also lead architect on three HOA boards and volunteers extensively with her son&#8217;s high school marching band. She also feels privileged to be a mentor to teenage girls. She lives in Ohio with her husband and three boys. Origin Story Sheri&#8217;s moment of discovering architecture wasn&#8217;t very inspiring. When she was in high school after her parents&#8217; recent divorce and her older siblings moved out to go to college, she was lost and her grades dropped. She was called to the counselor&#8217;s office, and they asked if she wanted to be an engineer. Everyone in her family was an engineer, so she wasn&#8217;t interested in that. The one class she was interested in was drafting. To get out of the office, she agreed to apply to architecture school. She was accepted at University of Cincinnati and found the direction that she needed there. She wasn&#8217;t an artistic architecture student, but enjoyed the structure and the design classes. Sheri married before she graduated and had her first child the year after she finished school. The process of looking for a job with a six month old was different than many of those she graduated with; she had a lot of parameters in place. After searching, she found Atelier Design close to home. They let her work part time with a flexible schedule. She was able to focus on her family but build the foundation of her career at the same time. She worked there for twelve years until the crash in 2008. At that point, a lot of things happened that created the perfect storm. Her husband, John, lost his job and they took it as a sign that it was time for the next thing. John got a new job in Indianapolis, and they picked up and moved their whole family &#8211; now three boys &#8211; from Ohio to Indiana. Everything fell apart there. When Sheri left Ohio, she started Scott Architecture and negotiated one of the builders from her old job with her and her work was back in Ohio. They decided to move back and start over. After that, every month got a little bit better than the last. How did things turn around? In 2013, Sheri connected with EntreArchitect. That was another defining year in her career. She had to make a five year plan and she was amazed that putting her life goals on paper looked totally different than it did at that moment in time. Her whole career had been a balance of family and working, and she was happy doing that. She know, however, that in 2020 all her kids would be out of the house. Where did that leave her then? She&#8217;d built a whole career balancing things, and looking down the road looks different than...

Finding Your Purpose in the Profession of Architecture with Michael Bernard of Virtual Practice Consulting When we decided to become architects, there was no doubt it was sparked from a desire to design. Maybe you love to draw, paint or build. Maybe someone recognized your talents and guided you toward architecture. All through architecture school and through your career, the definition of architecture revolves around the idea of design. Architecture is so much more than design. Your place in architecture may not be in design. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Finding Your Purpose in the Profession of Architecture with Michael Bernard of Virtual Practice Consulting. Background Michael is the founder of Virtual Practice Consulting, where he provides strategic advice to design and construction firms. He collaborates with firm leaders to assure effective growth, enrollment in mission and vision, development of growth models, strategic business development, and mentoring staff to become effective project leaders. Michael&#8217;s clients include architects, builders, structural engineers, landscape architects, and more. He&#8217;s been the adjunct professor in the architecture department at the California College of Art in San Francisco since 2006 and has served as a director on the board of the San Francisco chapter of AIA and on the board of the AIA California Council. He&#8217;s led several committees  and served as architect advisor to the academy for emerging professionals at the AIA San Francisco. Michael&#8217;s Origin Story Michael discovered architecture as a 10 year old when he was inspired by house plan magazines at the supermarket and built 3D models as a child. In college, he studied psychology with the intent of becoming a clinical psychologist. While he was teaching French to exchange students during summer school, a colleague noticed him sketching and asked if he&#8217;d ever thought of architecture as a profession. Instead of applying for graduate school in psychology, he applied for architecture. A light came on and he realized his innate design talent had just been sleeping. Michael started in design and worked for Charles Moore in Los Angeles. After some time, he went to work for a larger technical firm because he wanted to learn what the underpinning was of design. Over the course of his career, he always wanted more. He finally realized that what he loved most about architecture is the creative team that makes a project happen. How long did it take you to realize where you wanted to be? Michael always went back to the conversations in the studio. Those conversations were what really stick in his memory. The critical thinking was way more interesting to him than the drawing. The process of hearing people discuss what they love was so important to him. He had the revelation over 20 years into his practice that virtual practice would bring a different way to engage. He felt a confidence in thinking differently about the practice of architecture. While architects are poised to be incredibly entrepreneurial, free-thinking and liberal, often we define ourselves so narrowly. Given the way we&#8217;re tied to the cost of construction and other social aspects, we have the opportunity to think more broadly. However, we treat ourselves so narrowly that we insecurely define what architecture is. If we&#8217;re only about design, does anyone else matter? Are people who think more...

A New Way to Practice Architecture with Diana Nicklaus of SAAM Architecture The world has changed in so many ways since Mark&#8217;s architecture firm, Fivcat Studio, was launched in 1999. The internet was in its infancy. Few architects were using digital marketing and communication tools. Today, we can communicate instantly with anyone in the world. Our entire firm can be launched, built and run without a dedicated office. The world is changing and with it, the practice of architecture is changing too. How can we leverage the power of the internet and the cloud to improve our practice? How can the internet&#8217;s new models improve the profession? How can these new models not only allow us to thrive as entrepreneurs, but allow us to be more flexible, more family friendly, more socially responsible, more equitable? How can we live happier lives? This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, A New Way to Practice Architecture with Diana Nicklaus of SAAM Architecture. Background With over 20 years of experience, Diana has practiced architecture in both the US and Italy. Based in Boston, MA, Diana cofounded SAAM in 2014. It was established with the goal of providing high-level client services through unique and innovative project specific solutions over sector based opportunities. They&#8217;ve adopted a business model that provides aggressive HR policies and have therefore attracted some great talent. In three years, they&#8217;ve grown to a team of 24 people. Origin Story Diana grew up in Amarillo, Texas. Her mother was a humanities professor at the local community college, and she taught Diana a lot about how to examine her surroundings. Diana remembers driving through small towns and playing a game with the local churches: they would guess the denomination based on the style. When she ended up in university, she worked with an architectural historian and expanded her view of architecture and design. She finished at Tufts with a degree in architectural history and urban studies, and went to graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin. Following graduation, a strong collegiate connection with Pei Cobb Freed &amp; Partners in New York City, where she worked for four years learning about the global practice, high profile projects, and more. Her career took a turn when she worked for a firm in Venice that was doing building scanning. After that, she worked for a few firms in Cleveland, Ohio where she found a strong technical background. Eventually, she made her way back to Boston, where she really appreciates the strong roots in the equity discussion that&#8217;s happening today. Did you go to Boston with the intent of starting your own firm? Diana had no intention of starting her own firm. In Boston, she worked in an office with about 45 people, where she had the perks of flexible schedules and time to work from home. Work life benefits became an important factor in how she looked at the profession. Her company was acquired by another company, and after three years, she knew it was time to move away from that space and start her own company. In a large firm environment, they found themselves being encouraged to fit into a group depending on your specialties. As someone with a liberal arts background, Diana felt taught to work through different projects and create a different practice by working across sectors. When you started your firm, what planning stages did you go through? When they started, they built the firm knowing they wanted to do bigger work, not just typical architectural

How to Use StrengthsFinder to Find YOUR Place in Architecture We all have strengths and weaknesses. If we focus on finding, developing and building our strengths instead of filling in the gaps caused by our weaknesses, we&#8217;ll be more successful. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, How to Use StrengthsFinder to Find Your Place in Architecture with Erin Poppe of Charrette Venture Group. Background Erin Poppe is Charrette Venture Group&#8216;s leadership and strengths expert. She facilitates the development of strategies that allow teams to focus on and invest in their unique abilities. Prior to CVG, she revitalized the StrengthsFinder initiative at Kansas State University and presented on Strength Engagement at Gallup&#8217;s inaugural Clifton Strengths Summit. Origin Story Erin is the daughter of an architect who graduated from Kansas State University. Her parents were married on campus and then moved Washington where her dad started working for a small design firm called HKP Architects. Erin was always raised in the architecture world, knowing the language, purpose and value. Through her own studies unrelated to architecture, she began to talk to others about what makes people unique and how they can own their individual strengths. After graduating, she connected with Charrette Venture Group&#8216;s Todd Reding. They quickly realized a real need for this conversation within the architecture community. Now she spends her time talking to people in the architecture world about what makes them great. What is StrengthsFinder? The StrengthsFinder assessment helps to identify areas of a person&#8217;s greatest potential for success. For a long time, the conversation has been centered around weaknesses and how to become a more well-rounded person. Instead, how much further can you go by investing your energy into something that you&#8217;re naturally good at? Doing that helps people see exponential growth in the long road. The assessment is founded in research that studies a wide variety of talent functions that assess your natural areas of greatness. In about forty-five minutes, you learn the top five ways you innately think, feel or behave. Erin&#8217;s top five strengths are: strategic, ideation, individualization, connectedness, and learner. What does that mean? It means that most of all, she&#8217;s a strategic thinker. She loves ideas, dreaming, and making connections with others who have ideas and want to take them to the next level. However, she&#8217;s not very talented in execution. Having the assessment puts this information in front of her and helps to put language to the behaviors to better communicate with those around her how she is best of value. Are all architects similarly skilled? As you can expect, industries tend to cultivate talents. So far, Charrette Venture Group has found an abundance of strategic thinkers and executers within the architecture world: they can dream up ways to innovate, and they can do it too. The gap then comes into play when they don&#8217;t excel at communicating their worth. Based on those results, Charrette Venture Group aims to encourage architects to own what they do well and adapt to fill the needs of what they don&#8217;t do well. Can your strengths change over time? Your strengths can change over time based on major life shifts like a new job,...

Launching and Growing an Architecture Non-Profit Mark is often asked by students or young architects with an idea that might change the world in some big or small way, how might one start a charity; a non-profit organization that serves their community or serves the world. What is the first step? How do you obtain funding to launch and plant that seed of an idea and have it sprout into full blossom? And once you get it successfully started, serving the needs of others how do you keep it growing into an organization that might bear fruit for generations to come? This week we dive into answering some of these questions. In this episode at EntreArchitect Podcast, Launching and Growing a Architecture Non-Profit with AzuKo.org. Connect with AzuKo online at AzuKo.org. Follow AzuKo on Twitter or Facebook. Visit our Platform Sponsors Freshbooks is the easy way to send invoices, manage expenses, and track your time. Access your free 30 day trial at EntreArchitect.com/FreshBooks. (Enter EntreArchitect) Core by BQE Software is a brand new software designed specifically for architect&apos;s project management! Get a free 15-day trial at EntreArchitect.com/BQE. ARCAT has huge libraries of free content, Specs, CAD, BIM and more. No registration required. Want to collaborate with colleagues in real time? Visit EntreArchitect.com/ARCAT and click Charrette for more information. Charrette Venture Group invests in small- to mid- sized architecture firms with the goal to create action behind aspirations. Do you want to become a larger, stronger business? Visit EntreArchitect.com/CVG to learn more! Referenced in this Episode Download the Profit For Small Firm Architects course for FREE. Leave a Rating and Review at iTunes The post <a rel="nofollow"...

12 Steps to Take Control of Your Email As small firm architects, we&#8217;re working so hard to get everything done. Between the many hours we dedicate to building our firms and the time spent fostering strong relationships, there isn&#8217;t time for much else. Each week offers us 168 hours, no more and no less. Half of those hours are reserved for sleeping, eating and hygiene. What we choose to do with the remaining 84 hours will determine whether we succeed or fail. How do you use your 84 hours a week? Mark recently looked at his own habits, and was shocked to realize he was spending more than two hours per day sorting, managing and responding to email messages. That&#8217;s time away from building his business and being with his family. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, 12 Steps to Take Control of Your Email. 12 Steps to Take Control of Your Email 1. Turn off ALL notifications All the bells anId whistles that pop up? Turn them off. You don&#8217;t need them. Instead, schedule times in the day to check your email or social media. 2. Install spam filters More than 90% of Mark&#8217;s email is unwanted junk and solicitations. If you get 100 emails and 90 of them are garbage, help yourself get to the 10 emails that actually matter. 3. Unsubscribe from unread subscriptions If you don&#8217;t read it anymore, delete it. Is there a possibility to miss out on something? Sure, but if you&#8217;re not reading it anyway, you&#8217;re not missing out on anything. 4. Schedule time for dedicated email review Schedule specific times every day to review your email. Instead of using minute-by-minute notifications, you&#8217;ll be better disciplined. It&#8217;s hard to not pick up your phone and hit the email button, so reestablish new habits to find time to look at your email. 5. Do it, delegate it, defer it, delete it These are the four rules to processing any task list. If the email will take you less than 2 minutes, do it right then. If it can be forwarded and handled by someone else on your team, then delegate it. If it requires your attention and will take more than 2 minutes, move it to your task manager to be addressed during your scheduled email time. If it&#8217;s useless junk, delete it. 6. Keep email responses short Don&#8217;t waste your precious 84 hours composing long email messages. 7. Use the phone for dialogue Instead of going  back and forth over email, pick up the phone and have a conversation. This way, the issue will be resolved much faster, and you can get back to what&#8217;s most important. 8. Prepare formal letters for important documentation Formal reports and letters should be formal. Write and formalize letters for important information. 9. Don&#8217;t use email to coordinate your teams There are apps that are so much more efficient than email like Asana, Trello, or Slack. They allow simple search function to find communication. 10. Use a reminder app Instead of using email to send yourself a task, find a reminder app. Mark uses Wunderlist to manage his tasks. 11. Delegate your email management Let someone else manage your email. Imagine opening your email and finding five messages that really require your attention. By letting someone else go through steps 1-10,

The Entrepreneur Architect Series: Earl Parson At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. We want to interview you! What&#8217;s your story? Do you want to share your knowledge or the story about how you were inspired to pursue this profession? How do you become an entrepreneur architect? Join us for our series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Earl Parson. Background Earl Parson is an architect based in Los Angeles, California practicing residential architecture as Parson Architecture and is the founder of CleverModerns.com, an online platform empowering DIY owner-builders with plans and coaching. Origin Story Earl was born and raised in Muncie, Indiana, and his life intersected with architecture as a kid when his best friend&#8217;s dad was an architect. He saw the giant drawing boards and electric erasers, which may not have directly inspired him, but was a role model in his life of an option when he grew up. His dad owned a two story, three storefront building downtown as an investment and hobby, and there were constantly projects to fix it up that Earl was around. In addition, they added on to his house while he was growing up. There was a moment where he began falling in love with the old buildings. Though he knew he wanted to be an architect, he wanted to get out and explore the world. He spent time in St. Louis for his undergrad and ended up at SCI-Arc for grad school. He worked for some architects around town and then ended up on his own after the recession, and never looked back from there. After graduating, Earl and a friend took a summer off doing design work, building furniture, and other odd jobs. Later, he worked for Marmol Radziner, W3 Architects, and Studio Works, and eventually got a full time job Pasadena City College teaching drawing and Keating. After the recession, he started Parson Architecture. In 2009, some friends connected him with a gallery in Chinatown where architects and designers came together and had a show of furniture and other objects. Earl started doing some work for daycare facilities that required a certain amount of professionalism, creating a great growth opportunity to establish business practices. Where and when did you start welding? When Earl was a kid, his grandparents lived on a farm in southern Indiana. His grandpa made everything he had on his farm. He had a lightbulb moment seeing his grandpa create and realized that everything that had ever been created was first thought of and built by someone. Once he bought a house and had the space, he bought a welder and started accumulating equipment. That creative outlet kept him sane during the recession. What big goal did you achieve?  Earl entered

How To Attract and Hire The Best of the Next Generation of Architects with Nick Serfass, AIAS National Executive Director This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, How To Attract and Hire The Best of the Next Generation of Architects with Nick Serfass, AIAS National Executive Director. Background In his role as Executive Director of the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS), Nick Serfass focuses on driving the organization toward relentless &#8220;forward progress&#8221;, so that it creates a more impactful future for its student members and the profession of architecture.  Nick holds alumni status as a Virginia Wahoo, Miami Hurricane and Auburn Tiger. He is also an architect when necessary. Listen to Nick&#8217;s origin story back on EA050: Big Changes with AIAS Executive Director Nick Serfass. Tell us about your role at AIAS? Nick is the operational captain who makes the events, programming and services move forward. He&#8217;s also working to bridge the gap between academia and the profession. He works to connect students to the profession and help them succeed with the right tools and resources. A lot of what they&#8217;ve done is a ton of storytelling: about the profession, about what students need to know, and highlighting the great content the students put forth. They&#8217;re trying to get more eyeballs on the organization so that more people become aware of who they are and what they&#8217;re doing. That way, they can grow the community and it&#8217;s impact on the profession. The more people who know about AIAS, the more opportunities our members have to engage. They&#8217;re consistently creating products, programs and services to have a story to tell about. How can architects be attractive to the next generation of architects? For students, there are so many avenues to research firms in depth than there were before. You can find out a ton about small firms by diving into their social media. The biggest challenge is that students go to the website and can&#8217;t find a lot of information to get excited about working there. For firms, document and create. Show young architects what you&#8217;re doing, and put out vulnerable and authentic content for them to connect with.  All students bring different interests to the table, but today they&#8217;re searching for firms that are passionate about those topics too. If they can&#8217;t identify what a firm is excited about, they can&#8217;t make that connection. Do you think the website is the most important thing to update? Your website is your face, that&#8217;s where people will check you out. After that, social media and other digital platforms can add to your marketing strategy. If all you see is one static homepage, how can someone identify if they&#8217;re a fit or not? How can architects improve their websites to connect better with this new generation of architects? Make your website image and video heavy. Our phones are powerful, they take great photos and videos and the platforms available to us make it so easy to share. AIAS.org has a lot of imagery, graphics, and video imbedded. The goal is to catch someone&#8217;s eye. This is a creative industry: showcase your creativity. The point of your website is to tell a story about your firm. You can design it however you want when you&#8217;re doing that. Identify your story

EntreArchitect Live with Alex Gore of F9 Productions This week, Mark held his first live interview using Facebook live. Alex Gore from F9 Productions discussed his work with Daniel Libeskind, his firm in Longmont, Colorado, his podcast, Inside The Firm, sharing the behind-the-scenes with his partner, Lance Cayko, and his book The Creativity Code. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, EntreArchitect Live with Alex Gore of F9 Productions. Background Alex Gore grew up drawing wars of ants verses bees, playing backyard baseball, and being obsessed with Frank Lloyd Wright. After high school, he joined the national guard as a heavy equipment operator. There, he attended North Dakota State University and received a masters in architecture and construction management. He then worked under the world-famous architect Daniel Libeskind, teamed up with his best friend from college Lance Cayko to start F9 Productions. He&#8217;s the cohost of Inside the Firm Podcast and the author of The Creativity Code. How did you get to work for Daniel Libeskind? Going into Denver, Alex lined up several different interviews when he had a trip planned to be in town. He was back and forth with Libeskind, and was offered an internship first. Though he turned that down, he eventually was offered a full-time position. Did you carry any thoughts over from Libeskind to F9 Productions? Daniel Libeskind always did crazy fun projects, so Alex and Lance have tried to keep doing one fun project a year. They built a tiny house that was sustainable and cooler looking than traditional tiny houses. The goal was to make a commitment to do something cool every year. What are your thoughts on interning for a star firm? All of us interns worked a ton and were paid an hourly rate. At F9 Productions, interns are paid. When you&#8217;re sacrificing your time and energy in a studio culture environment, you have a lot to learn by doing that if that&#8217;s what you want to do. For F9 Productions, interns are just colleagues and designers who they work side by side with. How did F9 Productions start? When Alex got laid off by Libeskind, he called Lance and they made some plans. Eventually, Lance got laid off as well and Alex decided to move to Colorado and figure out how to work together. They worked as a tw0-man shop for a few years until they had consistent business in 2013-2014. Now, they have about ten people and even that feels stretched at times. The structure is a two-headed beast. They each have people who mainly work for one of them or the other, and in times of big projects they can pull from the other&#8217;s side. Depending on the project, they tend to hand off projects that are a better fit for the other person&#8217;s skills. Where did the name for F9 Productions come from? In college, Alex and Lance didn&#8217;t know if they really liked each other. When they finally realized each other had some useful skills, they worked closely together. They were on their computers all the time, and F9 was the key to render. They would tease their classmates who wanted to go home at the end of the day by saying, &#8220;Go ahead! Just hit F9 and the computer will...

Building a Large Firm by Starting Small with Tabitha Ponte of Ponte Health Tabitha Ponte is a licensed architect and builder, a philanthropist, a mother and a wife who&#8217;s leading Ponte Health. She&#8217;s based in Orlando, Florida, specializing in single source delivery, resources management and best outcomes serving the healthcare sector exclusively. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Building a Large Firm by Starting Small with Tabitha Ponte of Ponte Health. Origin Story Tabitha was seven or eight years old when she told her mother how she felt about spacial structures. She felt like she saw the void, not the stuff. In the car in Venezuela, where she spent her childhood, Tabitha&#8217;s mom told her all about architecture and engineering. Her mind was made up: she was going to be an architect. Tabitha had family members who were in architecture, one of whom designed and built his own house. She spent significant amounts time in that house and vividly remembers the influence that the fact that he built it himself had on her. She was very involved in music as a child, but always knew that she wanted to attend architecture school. She went to architecture school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and worked all through college. Because of this, she actually finished her IDP hours before she graduated college. Tabitha worked for three different firms all though college, and was eligible for her licensure exams the year she graduated. She worked to learn the business of architecture and construction from the inside. When she graduated she was given the opportunity to step into a leading role as an architectural project manager. Everything fell apart when the market crashed. Firms disappeared overnight and work halted. All of that eventually lead her into Chicago. She had visited Chicago previously, and thought that one day she may work there. Because of the market crash, she didn&#8217;t pursue architecture as her graduate degree; Tabitha studied construction instead at Illinois Tech, receiving a management and engineering degree. Tell us about a pivotal change in your career. Tabitha has worked to establish a holistic self in this field who is capable of design, resources management, leading job site and more. She wanted to create a school geared toward that kind of development of sharing what she knew, but felt so much pressure when working on a project to create a school. She got incredibly sick, and was required to make some serious life changes. A little over a year ago, she suffered a stroke. That was the last straw in choosing to walk away from the stress that was making her physically ill and stop pushing against a system that was fighting her. Where did you go next? Tabitha dropped everything in Chicago and traveled to fifteen states. She climbed several mountains and found so much bliss there that she thought she might stay. The cold of Chicago followed her to Portland, and she was ready to head back to Florida and to her family. She dove into public works construction and asset management, and found that the government agencies loved her: she&#8217;s licensed and could cross over to each different side and play each part well. While Tabitha was pregnant, she made the intentional choice to work from home. Her new look on life allowed her the time to be home with her daughter, read for personal development, exercise, and eat well. How did the transition into your new business happen? Tabitha remembers thinking that she didn&#8217;t want to be limited to construction administration rather than being in the field. She...

Using Emotions to Successfully Attract the Clients You Want Our prospective clients learn with their heads, but they decide with their hearts. After years of research, often, when a client chooses to work with an architect it simply comes down to their feelings. They choose their team by deciding who they like the most. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Using Emotions to Successfully Attract the Clients You Want. Do you ever make decisions based on emotion? We don&#8217;t always buy based on price or features, more often we buy because something makes us feel a certain way. When we&#8217;re developing a marketing strategy for our firms, we should consider the part that emotions play in the decisions that our clients make. Professor Antiono Damasio at University of Southern California argues that, emotion is a necessary ingredient to almost all decisions. When we are confronted with a decision, emotions from previous, related experiences affix values to the options we are considering. These emotions create preferences which lead to our decision. Our feelings help us make our decisions. That&#8217;s why storytelling is so powerful; they trigger emotions and feelings. In EA140, architect storyteller Jeff Echols shared How To Use Your Story to Find the Work You Want. How can we craft our branding to be based on emotion? How do we use emotion to effectively find the clients we want? Here are 4 Fundamentals about Emotions to use in Marketing: Knowing Who We Serve Matters Without knowing who we serve, how can we have any idea how to emotionally connect with those people? Who are you serving? Who do you want to serve? Where do these people work and play? What makes them happy? What are they trying to achieve in their search for an architect? Sensorial Experiences Matter What does an architect do? When answering this question, think beyond the traditional descriptions. How can we develop strategies and services that are experienced with every sense? Do we have strategies around sight, sounds, touch, and more? Think along the lines of experiencing design through virtual reality or presenting hand-sketched schematic designs with freshly baked cookies. Do you think your client will talk to their friends about that type of meeting? Using an Imaginative Approach Matter Immaginative systems and strategies make the process more real for our clients. It causes them to pause and think about what&#8217;s different than they expected it to be. How can we create a different and imaginative website to trigger emotions? What experiences can we give that feel different? What can spice up our proposals to give pause? How can clients&#8217; first point of contact feel different than another firm? The Words We Use Matter The words we choose have the opportunity to make a client feel one way or the other. In residential architecture, are we designing a house or creating a home? A house has a function, but a home is filled with feelings, love, and memory. Using intentionality with the words we use goes a long way. To learn more about emotional marketing, check out these books: Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping&#8211;Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond by Paco Underhill Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting...

60 Minute Business Plan for Small Firm Architects Did anyone tell you you needed to know how to run a business when you became an architect? Whether clients come knocking or not, it&#8217;s not so easy to keep them knocking. The solution is to write a business plan. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, 60 Minute Business Plan for Small Firm Architects. Maybe you&#8217;ve heard the words &#8220;business plan&#8221; and you feel yourself shutting down. Before you do that, let me share my vision. It came from years and years spent putting together my own various business plans. Finally, I put together a stripped down, one page version that I was able to put on paper quickly and develop as I went along. &#8220;The greatest value in creating a business plan is not the final document.  It&#8217;s the communication, the prioritization, the focus, the clarity, and learning that makes the process worthwhile.&#8221;  &#8211; Jim Horan Where are you now? Where do you want to be in the future? 5 Step Process for a Simple Business Plan for Small Firm Architects   Create a vision statement. Get a single piece of paper and write a single paragraph about your vision. What will your business look like? Where do you want to be? Do you want a high design firm? How much money are you making in your vision? What&#8217;s the big picture Consolidate that paragraph into a vision statement that embodies the essence of your vision. Describe your mission. Why did you become an architect? Why did you launch this firm? What propels you toward your vision? Develop simple strategies. Break it down into simple steps of how you&#8217;re going to reach your vision and mission. Create 5 steps and work your way backward from your end goal. What do you need to do to reach your goals? Make specific goals. Specify benchmarks that will lead you to execute your strategies. Be specific and give yourself a deadline for each. Commit to an action plan. What tasks will you complete to accomplish your goals? Who will work toward each goal? What does the time line look like? Find the steps required to reach your goals. Everything you need will go into this document. Once you&#8217;ve finalized your business plan, revisit it often. Revisit and revise your business plan 2-4 times a year to ensure that each piece is still relevant. This is an evolving document, and that&#8217;s okay! These periodic revisiting of your big ideas keeps you focused and wanting to push your firm further. What&#8217;s your vision for your architecture firm? Visit our Platform Sponsors Freshbooks is the easy way to send invoices, manage expenses, and track your time. Access your free 30 day trial at EntreArchitect.com/FreshBooks. (Enter EntreArchitect) Core by BQE Software is a brand new software designed specifically for architect&#8217;s project management! Get a free 15-day trial at <a

Brandon Hubbard, The Architect&#8217;s Guide This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Architect&#8217;s Guide with Brandon Hubbard. Background Brandon is a licensed architect based in  San Francisco, California and the founder of TheArchitectsGuide.com, dedicated to helping architects with their job application and career goals.  He practiced architecture with Foster + Partners in London where he worked on several high profile design projects, including Heathrow Terminal 3, the Bloomberg Headquarters and the Samba Bank Tower. Currently he&apos;s a senior architect in Heller Manus Architects in San Francisco working on large scale commercial and residential projects. You may have seen him online posting about architecture careers on TheArchitectsGuide.com as well as a content provider at Arch Daily. Origin Story Brandon was born and raised in New Zealand until he was ten, when he moved to Montana. There he completed his schooling, including a masters in architecture from MSU Bozeman. During his last few years and after graduation he worked for a small firm in Bozeman.  The small, five-person firm landed a $100 million residential project. In a short amount of time, Brandon gained a lot of experience. Following graduation, he enjoyed working on that large-scale project. Looking around Bozeman, he didn&apos;t see a lot of similar work readily available. He decided to look abroad, applying to several firms in London. He joined Foster and Partners and was there for 7 years. During his time there, he worked on a client base in Madrid, Spain and rode out the recession in 2008. He moved to San Francisco in 2014 to work with Heller Manas. When he arrived, he had to complete a supplemental exam and then used his free time to start TheArchitectsGuide.com. What pulled you to London? Brandon had wanted to relocate to China, but he realized he had to be vaccinated for a six-month waiting period for a few different things. During the wait time, he looked at other places abroad and landed on London. After a few offers and a week-long visit, he ended up moving there. What brought you back to the US? Brandon felt like he reached a point where he had to decide on a country. He had family in the US and friends in London, and felt like he was always flying back and forth. Then, the AREs weren&#8217;t available in London, so he was constantly flying to and from. Based on the scale of his projects, he was between San Francisco and New York. Brandon wanted a change and to have the option of being more in the outdoors. What lessons would you want to share from that experience? One article Brandon wrote details why he thinks you maybe shouldn&#8217;t work abroad in architecture, Is Working Abroad Bad For Your Architecture Career?. There are pros and cons to everything. Depending on your goals, it could be great. If your goal is to meet a diverse group of people and work on interesting projects, moving abroad and outside of your own comfort zone may be a good idea. One downside may be the disconnect between the US based regulations and local codes versus those in Europe. What inspired you to help other architects with their job search process? Part of it came from the number of...

The Passion, The Process and Problems of Running a Design/Build Architecture Firm Do you want more control? More money? More happy clients? More architecture with better design? Is design/build the answer to our professions problems? Will building your own projects be the solution to success for your small firm? What does it take to run a successful design build firm? This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Mark speaks with Jim Zack and Declan Keefe about The Passion, The Process and Problems of Running a Design/Build Architecture Firm. About Jim and Declan Jim Zack is based in San Francisco, California as the co-founder and partner at his design build firm, Zack de Vito: Design + Build. He visited EntreArchitect Podcast on EA102: Risks and Rewards with Architect Developer Jim Zack. He&#8217;s a current facilitator at EntreArchitect Academy&#8217;s Design/Build Mastermind Group. Declan Keefe is a founder and owner at Placetailor and a three-time guest at EntreArchitect Podcast: EA130: How to Build a Successful Architecture Firm That Works with Architect Declan Keefe, EA141: How to Build a Brand that Resonates with Your Most Valuable Clients, EA134: How to Get Started as an Architect Developer. How are your design/build firms structured? Jim has been involved in building things for a long time and he&#8217;s been in business for 25 years. He began working construction when he was 15 and was trained in carpentry long before he was an architect. Zack de Vito is organized as two different companies: one a construction company and one architecture firm. They&#8217;ve found that a lot of liability and contractual details organize themselves well in those two separate businesses. Conceptually, they try to make it feel like one company. Architects come to the office and sit and draw, and construction workers go to the site and build. As hard as they try to integrate the two day in and day out, it may not always be as seamless of a process. Zack de Vito has a project manager, estimator, a partner at the construction company, 6-10 carpenters, and 5-8 people in the office ranging from an interior designer to Jim&#8217;s wife, who performs office management and marketing for the firm. Placetailor is set up similarly although technically their architecture and construction companies are formally one business, where their development entity is a separate business. As far as scale, Placetailor has almost the same team setup as Zack de Vito. Their business came from a true design/build model where they weren&#8217;t doing any design for any other firms, and all their projects were able to be completed internally. In the last few years, they&#8217;ve switched to provide architecture for other builders as well. Even though they&#8217;re one business, they functionally work as architecture, construction and real estate development. Development is separated because it has a much higher level of...

How to Establish a Lasting New Habit Do you have a goal you want to accomplish? A new strategy or business process? A life change you want to make in your personal life? Are you keeping that goal locked away in the back of your mind instead of sharing it with others? Let&#8217;s accomplish our goals together! This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, How to Establish a Lasting New Habit. Maybe you&#8217;re listening to this podcast in a transitional season: from one season to another, out of a vacation and back into your regular routines, back to school, or otherwise. Recently, Mark began a project to figure out how to live a healthier lifestyle and wrote about it in a blog post: 10 Simple Steps to Develop a Lasting New Habit. It&#8217;s not hard to establish bad habits. Mark could roll out of bed and into his comfy computer chair, where he could stay the whole day. Instead, he wanted to create a new, healthy lifestyle. As the summer got started, Mark decided to make some new commitments. Over the last 10 weeks, he has worked through a process to create a healthier lifestyle. 10 Simple Steps to Develop a Lasting New Habit Step 1: Understand Your Why In the past, Mark has tried to establish healthy habits like meditation and running with little success. So why now? Mark is ready to create a healthy lifestyle, a mindset shift, and a way to integrate this lifestyle into his identity. &nbsp; Step 2: Keep It Simple Your new habit should be something that is hard to fail. We have so much going on, and if things are too complicated, you&#8217;re more likely to resist the change. For Mark&#8217;s 10X Project, he created a simple goal: each day do 10 minutes of stretching, 10 pushups, 10 crunches, walk for 10 minutes, run for 10 minutes, and meditate for 10 minutes. &nbsp; &nbsp; Step 3: Give your Project a Name For Mark, the 10X in the name 10X Project is not only a reference to the quantities of 10 used through the exercises, but is also a reference to the improvement I may experience when I accomplish my goal. Can I improve my health by 10X with a lasting new habit? Will this new habit lead to other habits that may improve other parts of my life? &nbsp; Step 4: Set a Goal In the past, Mark has often created ambiguous goals. This time, his goal was clear: each day do 10 minutes of stretching, 10 pushups, 10 crunches, walk for 10 minutes, run for 10 minutes, and meditate for 10 minutes. If he could establish that within 10 weeks, then hopefully the habit will lead to a healthier lifestyle down the road. &nbsp; Step 5: Develop a Plan What are you going to do? How and when are you doing to do it? Create some structure. Determine what you&#8217;ll do if you miss a day. Step 6: Track Your Progress &nbsp; In a journal, Mark tracked his progress through the days and weeks to reach his goal. You could also track using your personal calendar or an app that works well for you! Step 7: Find Some Accountability Usually we don&#8217;t like being held accountable, but it&#8217;s clear that accountability works. We&#8217;re more likely to achieve our goals by sharing our plans. Mark posted his 10X Project for all of his readers and continued to post on social media on occasion. &nbsp; Step 8: Take Advantage of Life&apos;s Cycles When Mark started the 10X Project, he was in a transitional...

How to Get Started as an Architect Developer This week, enjoy the Best of EntreArchitect Podcast as Mark R. LePage invites Declan Keefe of Placetailor back to share his knowledge about How to Get Started as an Architect Developer. For full show notes and a list of references from the original podcast, visit EntreArchitect.com/EA134. Connect with Declan Keefe online at Placetailor.com and on Twitter @placetailor &amp; Instagram. Visit our Platform Sponsors Freshbooks is the easy way to send invoices, manage expenses, and track your time. Access your free 30 day trial at EntreArchitect.com/FreshBooks. (Enter EntreArchitect) CORE by BQE Software is designed specifically for architect&#8217;s project management! Get a free 15-day trial of CORE at EntreArchitect.com/BQE. ARCAT has huge libraries of free content, Specs, CAD, BIM and more. No registration required. Want to collaborate with colleagues in real time? Visit EntreArchitect.com/ARCAT and click Charrette for more information. The post How to Get Started as an Architect Developer (Best of EntreArchitect Podcast) appeared first on EntreArchitect // Small Firm Entrepreneur Architects. Mentioned in this episode:ArchITAll AccessBuild Your BrandGabl CES

5 Steps to Success and Relevance in Architecture with Carol Kurth, FAIA Carol is the owner of Carol Kurth Architecture + Interiors in Bedford, New York. She specializes in architecture and interiors, and does some beautiful work. She&#8217;s a popular keynote speaker who&#8217;s sought after for her insights on architecture, design, sustainability and design trends. She&#8217;s won multiple awards and has been featured in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and more. She&#8217;s been featured on NBC News and MTV Cribs. She&#8217;s a long time friend of Mark&#8217;s and he&#8217;s learned so much from her. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, 5 Steps to Success and Relevance in Architecture with Carol Kurth, FAIA. Carol&#8217;s Origin Story Carol grew up in Washington Heights in the northern tip of Manhattan. Looking across the Hudson River, she could see the New Jersey cliffs in the distance. She was really interested in crafts growing up, particularly making dolls and doll houses. When she was 13, she took a class at The Cloisters on doll-making and the New York Times featured her. She ended up going to The Bronx High School of Science and loved her technical drawing and drafting class. A distant relative, Irwin Chanin, who was very philanthropic and had lots of buildings named after him. He also designed the Chanin Building. Carol was very close to his wife growing up, and her aunt recognized Carol&#8217;s passion for dolls and dollhouses and encouraged her. She attended City College&#8217;s School of Architecture and loved being at an architecture school in the middle of the city where your professors were practicing architects whose work in the city you could actually see. How did you start practicing architecture? Carol worked throughout school for professors or doing part-time jobs. She worked in Seattle for a while and then got a job at the end of her fourth year where she ended up becoming a partner, marrying her former husband, and building a practice. In 1995 she went off on her own and opened her firm in Bedford. She&#8217;s been specializing in residential and commercial architecture. Many are on complicated sites, and Carol has always been undaunted by cliffs. 5 Steps to Success and Relevance 1: Choose and develop a target market In the beginning, Carol was in a firm where they did a little bit of everything and she didn&#8217;t feel the passion there. For her, the passion always came from the site, the building, and the client&#8217;s vision. There&#8217;s no two sets of clients, budgets, or sites that are alike, and the variety is what she thrives on. She loves the wholistic vision of working with a client to find a site all the way down to deciding on the table settings. 2: Schedule time for marketing and public relations Architects were pretty much advised to market and advertise until 1978, and architects didn&#8217;t really get the message until the mid 1980s. There was a long lag time between the logistics of allowing marketing happened and when architects actually went to do it. Carol felt she was on the early end and was always fascinated with the media. What is the relevance of architecture and design to clients? How do we keep ourselves fresh and at the forefront? Big firms have big marketing and PR divisions in their firms, perhaps 3-5 people who are dealing with...

Building an Online Media Empire with Devon Tilly Devon is the Denver-based owner of Mountain View Window and Door, a nationally-recognized company providing windows and doors for high-end residential projects. He&#8217;s the creator and host of the Art of Construction Podcast and brand, cohosted by Kevin Keefe. There they talk about all things business, success, and building sustainable, thriving business. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Building an Online Media Empire with Devon Tilly of The Art of Construction Podcast. Devon&#8217;s Origin Story Devon was the oldest of five children whose father began as a contractor and worked himself up to district manager. Every time him and his large family moved, they would buy a house and fix it up. Devon was always interested in the art of construction and the marketing of construction. He is passionately interested in construction and has lived that life long enough to speak the language. Sometimes he felt the industry was too corporate (&#8220;what&#8217;s your lowest price&#8221;) or too construction (&#8220;we&#8217;ve always done it this way&#8221;). Devon moved to Colorado and earned his marketing degree, followed by a move into the construction world. He found he didn&#8217;t fit the corporate box very well as an expressive entrepreneur at heart. Thirteen years ago, he went to work for one of his customers. He loved the complication of construction that can either make or break the project. That passion drew him to focus on windows and doors. After meeting his wife, he bought a company out and started Mountain View Window and Door. Now, they have two locations in Colorado, twenty-eight employees, and are about to close on an expansion of Art of Construction. After being interviewed for The Chaise Lounge: Interior Design Podcast, Devon decided to follow a dream and begin a podcast of his own. How did you grow Mountain View Window and Door so quickly? The first step was to have a really good plan. Next, he assembled a support team of a board of directors and an advisory counsel. Devon&#8217;s team was led by his father in law, Greg, who copyrighted a presentation &#8220;The Full Life Perspective&#8220;. From that, he was able to develop his full life perspective. With a good plan, Devon knew he needed to take a risk to succeed. Him and Greg decided to buy a business. Greg helped him put his why together: to be the best supplier for windows, doors and hardware to contractors, architects and project designers in Colorado. As Devon put his plan together, he followed everything laid out in The E-Myth Revisited. He looked at different platforms to see what they did well and what they could improve on. He got his masters and figured out that he was a visionary leader. That was the...

The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Meghana Joshi  At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. We want to interview you! What&#8217;s your story? Do you want to share your knowledge or the story about how you were inspired to pursue this profession? How do you become an entrepreneur architect? Join us for our series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Meghana Joshi. Background Meghana Joshi is an architectural consultant from Irvine, California. She has six of her architectural exams complete and one to go for her official architecture registration. She is the founder of Women in Architecture Committee at AIA Orange County and a member of the Communications Committee for AIA California Counsel and AIA Orange County. Her blogs are published at Equity by Design and the AIA National&#8217;s #ilookup page. She moved to the US when she was 22, and with a major in architecture and an employment permit she was set to go. She has a heavy emphasis on concrete construction, and her Indian education left her under-educated in wood construction. She has a Bachelors of Architecture from Karnatak University in India and a Masters of Architecture with an emphasis on green buildings from San Francisco Institute of Architecture. Meghana&#8217;s Origin Story Meghana grew up in India where on every corner there was a historical monument of architectural significance. Her favorite activity as a kid was to make up stories about the people who lived in the buildings around her. Layers and layers of information built, and Meghana wanted to be someone who created and left a story for generations to come. There were no architects in her family, but her parents wanted her to have a career that she did for her enjoyment. After school, she got married and moved with her husband to the US. When they moved to the US, she planned to start practicing architecture right away but found that it wasn&#8217;t as easy as she had expected. She interviewed and got a job as an intern, but found quickly that she didn&#8217;t understand the construction details that people were talking about. She began to study and relearn everything she thought she knew. A coworker shared with her the need to take the ARE and the benefit to join the AIA and learn more about architecture in the US. The Entrepreneur Architect Questions What is one big goal you&#8217;ve achieved in your career and how did you get there? The ARE is Meghana&#8217;s biggest goal. She took her most recent test about 8 months ago and was supposed to take the next test in January. Unfortunately, some family health issues have arisen that have prevented her from taking it a few times, and the next one scheduled is coming up. Another goal is to stay involved in

Taking Action to Maximize the Value of the Architect with Ric Abramson, FAIA Ric Abramson, FAIA has been in professional practice as a licensed architect for 28 years. He established his small firm, WORKPLAYS, in 2003. He&#8217;s taught for over 18 years on the faculty of Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and USC School of Architecture. He&#8217;s been invited as a keynote speaker at the BIG Ideas Conference and has produced educational workshops around the country. He&#8217;s a small firm advocate, spearheading new California legislation protecting architects&#8217; creative work. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Taking Action to Maximize the Value of the Architect with Ric Abramson, FAIA. Ric&#8217;s Origin Story Ric&#8217;s story has been an organic process; he didn&#8217;t know he wanted to build things as a child. Looking back, he was always a &#8220;maker&#8221; of some sort, creating things and exploring. In high school, he was summoned to the counselor&#8217;s office to figure out what he wanted to pursue. His current class load and interests pushed him toward architecture school. He earned his undergraduate degree at California Polytechnic State University, and his progression through the program created more passion for what he wanted to do. His first job was with a small, well-established firm. It was a very old-school experience. That firm did primarily government work, but Ric stayed there for a year and a half before going to the next firm for 6 years. After that, he attended UCLA for his Masters of Architecture degree and returned to begin a doctoral program. He was awarded a full ride scholarship to go study architecture in Italy. That had a profound effect on the course that Ric would embark on. After a year there, he came back, started his own firm, was offered a teaching position and has been growing ever since. What kind of work do you do? Ric does mostly residential work, with some commercial and consulting work. Lately they&#8217;ve been doing policy consulting in Los Angeles, California. Like many growing urban areas, Los Angeles has a huge housing need. They&#8217;re looking for ways to be more innovative, integrating density and sustainable living. How can we house more people in closer proximity without giving up home ownership? WORKPLAYS responded to an RFP to write a new ordinance and design guidelines for a compact home ordinance in Los Angeles County. Why did you move from design work to working with government? Ric thinks it might go back to his Italian research roots. He was always fascinated with universal thinking, not only creating architecture, but the process by which it&#8217;s made and how architects fit into that role. Some of the control that architects once held has gone away, and that&#8217;s because architects aren&#8217;t at the table when housing policy is being made. How can others get involved in policy-making? There are so many ways to get involved. If you&#8217;re not already, get involved with a board, city commission, design review panels, etc. AIA National has a <a...

Katie Hutchison Living a Portfolio Life Katie is an architect, an author, photographer and many other things based in Warren Rhode Island. She&#8217;s passionate about residential architecture, specifically small projects. She&#8217;s the author of The New Small House and she&#8217;s currently working on a new book. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Living a Portfolio Life with Katie Hutchison. Katie&#8217;s Origin Story Architecture didn&#8217;t come to Katie early. She was most interested in writing when she was younger and she pursued that initially. Throughout her early childhood and education, she was very interested in fine arts; she drew, painted, and felt like she was very spatially aware. After her degree, she went to work for magazines, including US Magazine, in Manhattan. Her friend worked for Robert A. M. Stern, and she ended up with a temporary position in the Publicity department there. She worked in the slide library of architecture from around the world. Katie spent hours in the tiny room going through the slides. After that, she decided to go back to school and her family connections brought her to the Newport, Rhode Island. She called the head of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and inquired about their architecture program; they only had an undergraduate program and she wanted to know if they had any suggestions. They suggested that Katie enroll as a transfer student, essentially using her prior credits to advance as far as possible and then take the remaining courses required for a Bachelors of Architecture degree. Upon graduating in 1992 during a recession, Katie started at a Benefit Street Design, a firm in Providence that specialized in commercial interiors. After that, she jumped around a lot at many firms based on where her and her husband relocated to. When did you officially start practicing? Katie went out on her own in 2002. Shortly thereafter, she collaborated with an architect friend in Cape Cod which helped bring in some consistent work and get her off the ground. She has various other interests in addition to architecture, so her view of the small firm life is diversified. Not long after she went out on her own, she began freelance writing for Fine Homebuilding. It was a great way to keep her thinking about design and build some publicity. That&#8217;s what started her along the journey to eventually write her book. Katie had a friend who worked for another publication at The Taunton Press and continued to pitch them her ideas. Why did you decide to be a sole practitioner? Like any other career choices, Katie&#8217;s career evolved from who she was. She always followed design-oriented pursuits and didn&#8217;t want to do just one thing to the exclusion of the others. She loves the change in activity, bouncing around between writing, billing, administrative work, phone calls, and more. How did you begin writing your book? In 2007, she started pitching book ideas to The Taunton Press. They brought her in for a meeting to discuss concepts and...

The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Nathan Buhler At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. We want to interview you! What&#8217;s your story? Do you want to share your knowledge or the story about how you were inspired to pursue this profession? How do you become an entrepreneur architect? Join us for our series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Nathan Buhler. Background Nathan is an Architectural Technologist and the owner of BLDG Workshop in Toronto Canada. He grew up in a logging community in British Columbia and lived overseas in South America. His creative experiences drew interests to architecture. When design became the main focus of his work life, Nathan&#8217;s themes relating to connection, authenticity and people became integral to his work. Nathan&#8217;s Origin Story From the small logging community in British Columbia, Nathan went to Bible school training in Vancouver and worked in ministry and counseling for many years. He felt like he was around people all the time but was still feeling alone. Nathan was always searching for something different. When he heard of a guy who built a house on top of waterfall (Frank Lloyd Wright&#8217;s Fallingwater), he knew he wanted to go to architecture school. He went to architecture school at 30 years old, and felt a little like a fish out of water with all the students that were younger than he was. Nathan completed his schooling on a different route and has a different certification. The Entrepreneur Architect Questions What is one big goal you&#8217;ve achieved in your career and how did you get there? Nathan had an idea for a design of a house that would stand as a silhouette of a house against a landscape. He wanted something that was connected with the design community. Nathan connected with a furniture designer and they changed the typology of how to do the project. With this project, Nathan felt like the story of what they were doing was fluent from start to finish; through the big picture and construction. What struggles have you gone through? At one point, it felt like projects weren&#8217;t coming in; things were looking bleak. One of Nathan&#8217;s partners went to do something else, and he had to lay another staff member off. It wasn&#8217;t a market-driven slowing down, Nathan felt he just got left behind when people were looking for someone to do their home. He read an article about cash flow and, when he worked through the numbers, he realized he needed to bring in a lot more work to keep things going. Unfortunately, he didn&#8217;t feel like he was taught that kind of stuff in school. Now, he&#8217;s worked through most of that. What was your biggest &#8220;aha&#8221; moment? A little over a hear ago, Nathan looked at their placing on Houzz and they were #1. He thought it was a glitch, but it hasn&#8217;t changed....

The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Daniel Robey At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. We want to interview you! What&#8217;s your story? Do you want to share your knowledge or the story about how you were inspired to pursue this profession? How do you become an entrepreneur architect? Join us for our series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Daniel Robey. Background Daniel is a landscape architect and the owner of Huntlands Landscape Architecture in Northern Virginia. He has a bachelor&#8217;s from Clemson in Landscape Architecture and is a licensed professional architect in the state of Virginia, a LEED Green Associate  and a multi-award winning designer. He lives in Virginia with his wife Murphy and his three kids, Maris, Charlie and Hank. Daniel&#8217;s Origin Story Daniel started out loving to draw and always thought he wanted to draw cartoons. In high school, he fell in love with golf and everything in his life began to revolve around it. When he had to figure out what he wanted to do after high school, he fell upon architecture at a local golf course that was under construction. When he walked around the grounds with the architect, Daniel realized that was what he wanted to do. He knew that to get into golf course architecture he needed to have a name or professional behind him, so he did a number of internships: one for a land-planning company, one for residential install work, and another for the Charleston parks department. He was exposed to different avenues. After college he worked for a land planning civil engineering firm in Charlotte. Daniel felt he wasn&#8217;t doing a whole lot of creative work, so he planned to move to the residential side of things right before the birth of his first child. He moved from a smaller company to a large residential design build firm. This past year, he opened his his own business doing high-end landscape architecture. The Entrepreneur Architect Questions What does a landscape architect do? Daniel does high-end residential architecture. He works with elements of plantings, hardscape, architectural structures, water features and everything that ties it together like lighting, audio, and more. What is one big goal you&#8217;ve achieved in your career and how did you get there? Daniel didn&#8217;t ever dream of starting his own business, but it became clear that that was the best thing for him to do to advance his career. When he came to that conclusion, it was a huge goal for him to set out to achieve. He did a ton of reading, research, podcast-listening, and more to get as much business information as he could. What are the pros to starting your own business? It&#8217;s allowed Daniel more flexibility to be home with his family and to be involved with his kids. What struggles have you gone through? Early on, Daniel...

The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Danei Cesario At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. We want to interview you! What&#8217;s your story? Do you want to share your knowledge or the story about how you were inspired to pursue this profession? How do you become an entrepreneur architect? Join us for our series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Danei Cesario. Background Danei is the 333rd black female architect in history. Originally from Manchester, England, Danei was enamored with the architectural prestige of New York buildings from an early age. Her early career began with her scholarly pursuits at New York&#8217;s Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture served as treasurer for the City College chapter of the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS CCNY) and earned the J. Max Bond Jr. memorial scholarship while working on complex public sector projects. She&#8217;s currently the youngest architect at Francis Coffman architects, managing the execution of multifaceted healthcare projects. Danei&#8217;s Origin Story Danei moved to the US when she was about six, and spent most of her childhood moving back and forth between the US and England. She lived in various homes and cities over time, but the sense of home for her was wherever her family was. She saw the way a city was planned and observed her feelings moving through out it. The contrast of Manchester vs. New York City, post-industrial with deep history compared to newness and skyscrapers. She grew up sketching and drawing. Her dad was an engineer, and was well schooled in isometrics and technical drawing, so he and her mother fostered Danei&#8217;s eye for that. Danei always knew she wanted to be an architect. Danei has education from both sides of the pond, but she was always drawn to the energy in New York City. She wanted to stay close by for college, while her mother wanted her to return to England. She ended up at City College, where she found out the hard way all that architecture school entailed: long hours and hard work. She decided to move close by, and after the school built a closer building to where she lived, she was able to live and work there. That was a pivotal moment in her life and career, as it allowed her to establish what she wanted for herself as an architect and as a young woman. The Entrepreneur Architect Questions What is one big goal you&#8217;ve achieved in your career and how did you get there? Danei always knew she wanted to be an architect. She continually strives to achieve that warm, fullness of heart that she herself felt when she sees something that is well-executed, well-thought out and enjoyable. Her road to becoming an architect was a 20 year journey. Some of the other things she didn&#8217;t know were goals just sort of happened along that journey. She met her husband in school, and they got engaged at the end of their fourth year. Danei moved through life following what made her feel fulfilled: as a wife, as a mom, as an architect. Her goals evolved as she evolved. What struggles have you gone through? It&#8217;s...

The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Michael Kilkelly At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. We want to interview you! What&#8217;s your story? Do you want to share your knowledge or the story about how you were inspired to pursue this profession? How do you become an entrepreneur architect? Join us for our series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Michael Kilkelly. Background Michael Kilkelly is a principal at Space Command, an architecture and consulting firm in Middletown, Connecticut. He&#8217;s also the founder of ArchSmarter.com, a website dedicated to helping architects work smarter not harder. Michael has received his bachelor of architecture from Norwich University and his masters of science, design and computation from MIT. Previously he was an associate at Gehry Partners in LA where he worked on several high profile design projects including New York by Gehry and the Guggenheim. He writes regularly about architecture on ArchSmarter, Arch Daily and Architect Magazine. Michael&#8217;s Origin Story Michael liked to play with legos and draw as a kid, and had a hunch that architecture might be the profession for him. However, he had no idea what an architect did on a daily basis. Aside from going to the library and taking a drafting class in high school, he had very little exposure to architecture. He felt that he had both the technical and creative components necessary to pursue architecture as a career path. When he got into school in Vermont that he realized what architecture really was; it wasn&#8217;t totally what he expected. He pursued his 5 year bachelor of architecture. They did a lot of hand drafting, built physical models and had a computer class. His thesis was set at Burning Man. He was making physical models and hand drawing while using rendering and animation on 3D studio. After graduating, he worked for a firm in Connecticut for several years where he worked to figure out how to integrate design and technology. He knew he wanted to go back to school, so he headed to MIT. His degree there was mostly up for him to define, with a big requirement to pursue a thesis at the end. His research was into construction documents and how to better develop them to support architects. Following MIT, he worked in the Boston area for a few firms, a landscape architect, an internet startup developing project management software for construction companies, and another medium-sized firm. Then, an opportunity came up looking for something with both architecture and technical experience. In 2005, Michael and his wife move to LA where two of his kids were born. He worked for Gehry Partners for several years before moving back to New England. He&#8217;d seen people work their whole lives at a firm and one day be let go, and he knew that working for someone else wasn&#8217;t always the most secure option. Michael read up a lot on business and thought the move back to Connecticut would be a great time to jump out on his own. He offered to do some consulting and remote work for his previous company as a great consistent transition into working for various clients. Since then, Michael has been working on...

People for Urban Progress with Donna Sink Donna Sink is a practicing architect at Rowland Design based in Indianapolis. Until her recent move there, she was a small firm architect who owned her own practice. She was recently the campus architect at Indianapolis Museum of Art and she&#8217;s involve din the local arts and design community as past President and current member of the Indiana chapter of AIA, a board member at People for Urban Progress and a member of the Indianapolis Sign Ordinance Revision Task Force. You may know Donna best from her active Twitter presence or from her work as cohost at Archinect podcast. This week at EntreArchitect podcast, People for Urban Progress with Donna Sink. Donna&#8217;s Origin Story Donna&#8217;s journey in architecture started when she set up her Barbie&#8217;s condo in a bookshelf as a young girl. Her parents recognized her interest and encouraged her to take drafting classes in high school. For her, art felt too personal as an awkward teenager, but she loved drafting. It led her to a visit with her sister in college in Arizona, and when she walked into the lobby of the architecture school, she knew she was hooked. She did a five year bachelor of architecture at University of Arizona before going to Michigan for grad school. She was a fan of John Irving and loved the stories about him spending time in Vienna, Austria. Michigan had an exchange program that went to Vienna, and she spent a semester there. She realized she had a bachelor of architecture that she could get licensed with and she wanted to spend her two years in grad school doing crazy, more philosophical and theological discoveries at Cranbrook. Her five year degree prepared her practically to put together a set of documents and function in an office. In grad school at Cranbrook, she wanted to explore more theory and round out her philosophical attitudes. She was entirely responsible for doing the creative work that she wanted to do. She was 100% immersed in the program. The studio had a kitchen and a huge table where they would make group dinners. When you work in the saarinen design studio and walk home to your dorm through the most beautiful outdoors environment. Everything else felt bland. Donna met her husband at Cranbrook and they left together to go to Philadelphia where she went straight into an internship at Atkin Olshin Shade. She was there for 10 years and received a ton of help to grow. After she had a baby, her best friend called from Indianapolis and asked her to come on as a partner for high end residential remodels. When 2008 happened, Donna panicked after seeing the repercussions around the country. She got a call from Ball State University to be an adjunct professor for a guaranteed paycheck, and put the partnership on hold. Donna was now facing these college students knowing that they weren&#8217;t going to get a job when they got out of school. She began teaching them how to be entrepreneurs to use their skills in other ways. She got involved with AIA National&#8217;s emerging professional&#8217;s group and started pressing the idea of teaching students how to be business people. She put together a local conference talk about how to go about nontraditional practices and has rolled with it ever since. How do we practice in the world where we know each other through Twitter? She got an opportunity to go to the University of Indianapolis as the campus architect and loved it, but missed practicing. She realized that architecture is a long profession and that there was time to wear different hats and do different things. While pursing different things, she...

The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Lee Calisti At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. We want to interview you! What&#8217;s your story? Do you want to share your knowledge or the story about how you were inspired to pursue this profession? How do you become an entrepreneur architect? Join us for our series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Lee Calisti. Background Lee Calisti is based in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and is a licensed architect and founder of Lee Calisti Architecture and Design. He was one of the original founders of AIA Pittsburgh chapter&#8217;s Young Architects&#8217; Forum and was a co-chair for seven years. He&#8217;s served as a regional liaison representing Pennsylvania as part of the AIA National Young Architects Forum. He serves on the City of Greensburg History and Architecture Review Board and trustee for the Greensburg Alliance Church. He&#8217;s active in social media and is a regular writer for the #ArchiTalks blog series. Origin Story Lee wanted to be an architect ever since he was a child. Early in grade school he discovered drawing and had a passion for comic books. He worked to replicate what he saw in the comics and developed skills in his early days. In junior high, he had an art teacher who was a great inspiration, he promoted creativity and encouraged Lee to develop his skills further. He was fascinated by architecture, checking out books from the library to learn more. Soon enough, he designed houses and built model. His mother bought him a drafting table as a kid and he spent hours there. Lee focused singularly on architecture. He applied for school and plunged into the world of architecture. He took design classes at night and got connected twitch an adjunct professor who was hugely inspirational to him. His professor was working for a firm and doing work on the side. Recently, Lee was able to connect with him to thank him for his patience and inspiration. After finishing school at the top of his class, he went to work for an architect he&#8217;d spent summers with previously. He learned the nuts and bolts of working in an architecture practice. After that, he went to work in downtown Pittsburg. He loved the big city where he was exposed to lots of different things, and it was those experiences that prepared him to launch his own firm. His son was born shortly after, and Lee started teaching as an adjunct professor. He wanted to be an architect and a teacher just like those who mentored him. Everything leading up to that point prepared him, but couldn&#8217;t replace the hard work it takes to start a firm. Lee borrowed money from his personal savings with the promise to pay it off within a year. He brought work in slowly but surely and paid off the loan without having to borrow from a bank. Down the road, he realized that, unfortunately, he couldn&#8217;t do both architecture and teaching. His personal practice was growing and he needed to focus on that exclusively. Last year, Lee began considering hiring his first employee and started the wheels in motion to expanding his firm. The Entrepreneur Architect Questions What is one big goal you&#8217;ve achieved in your career and how did you get...

The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Sharon George At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. We want to interview you! What&#8217;s your story? Do you want to share your knowledge or the story about how you were inspired to pursue this profession? How do you become an entrepreneur architect? Join us for our series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Sharon George. Background Sharon is a sole proprietor and the principal architect at Architecture by George in Austin, Texas. She&#8217;s worked with custom residential architecture for the past fifteen years, specializing in high-performance homes. She serves on the advisory group for the National Custom Residential Architects Network (CRAN) as the chair of the emerging professionals&#8217; committee. Origin Story Sharon grew up in India, and didn&#8217;t grow up around a lot of interesting architecture or architects. She was very interested in drawing, and her earliest memory was of her father taking her to an art competition. She was encouraged in her artistic skills, but also excelled in science and math. She chose to become an engineer as the path of least resistance. Due to the system in India, the bar was very high for her to get into engineering school and she didn&#8217;t get in. She decided on a degree in mathematics, which was fun for all of six months until her moment of clarity: she didn&#8217;t belong there. She realized just because she was good at something didn&#8217;t mean it was her passion to follow it. Sharon soon received a letter of invitation for a new college. There, she saw a huge studio with a bunch of drafting tables. She knew then that that was where she belonged. Though she knew little about the profession, she took the leap of faith. It was the best decision she could have made. Her five years in architecture school were the best years of her life and she enjoyed every moment. In India, when you graduate from architecture you&#8217;re immediately an architect; there&#8217;s no need for registration. She worked for a year at the same firm that she apprenticed at. She applied to several universities in the States and loved that the University of Texas at Austin because of their program in sustainable architecture. She attended there and was a part of their first ever solar decathlon. When she graduated, she wanted to work for a firm that did high-performance, high-end homes. Unfortunately, her education from India didn&#8217;t transfer to the US. She had to work for 8 years to gain the experience prior to taking the AREs. Last year, she started her own firm, Architecture By George. The Entrepreneur Architect Questions What is one big goal you&#8217;ve achieved in your career and how did you get there? Sharon isn&#8217;t big on goal setting, but it&#8217;s something she&#8217;s consciously working on. When she looks back at all the things that have gotten her to where she is, and follows her intuition most times. One of her biggest goals was getting her license. Starting her own firm wasn&#8217;t always a goal, but when it became her path she focused on getting...

How Does NCARB Serve the Small Firm Architect? The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards is a nonprofit organization made up of architectural licensing boards of 54 states and 8 rerrirotires. While each jurisdiction is responsible for regulating the practice of architecture within its borders,  NCARB develops and administers programs for licensure candidates and architects throughout the nation. Our community of small firm architects is filled with people with very mixed feelings toward NCARB. Many see the benefits that NCARB provides all architects, while some question the process and procedures required by the organization. Still others have questions about whether NCARB is even relevant in our profession. Do small firms see any benefit to membership and certification? In short, our community of entrepreneur architects have many questions for the leaders at NCARB. This week at EntreArchitect podcast, Mark R. LePage asks NCARB&#8217;s Kristine Harding and Greg Erny, &#8220;How does NCARB Serve the Small Firm Architect?&#8220;. Background Kristine Harding is an architect based in Alabama and the current president of NCARB. Greg Erny is a small firm architect out of Nevada and the incoming NCARB president. Kristine&#8217;s Origin Story Kristine grew up in Texas where her mother often used graph paper to draw floor plans. One day as she stood in the kitchen, her mom told her to be an architect. She took drafting in high school and fell in love with how they focused on buildings instead of just mechanical drafting. She studied architecture at Rice University and her passion grew. Eventually she ended up in Alabama where she worked for a firm who had a great transition plan and one day took over that firm. Greg&#8217;s Origin Story Greg&#8217;s from a small town in rural Indiana, and one of his earliest memories of recognizing the world of architecture was seeing the craftsmanship of his grandfather&#8217;s barn. He was involved in and around construction sites growing up and began down the architecture path in high school. He persevered through the five year program at Ball State University. After earning his license and working for a few firms, he branched out to start his own firm and has been there ever since. How did you get involved in NCARB? Kristine was appointed to the state registration board in the state of Alabama. At that point, she was a member of NCARB. She served on the board for 12 years and came up through the leadership to ultimately reach the board level. Greg became involved with his local AIA chapter. He became the president of the chapter and then the president of the state, and, when a spot on the state board opened up, he took it. He got more involved with NCARB on the regional level and found a home in the organization. What is NCARB? In 1919 at an AIA convention in Nashville, 13 states got together and thought it would be good to have an association to facilitate licensure. It&#8217;s grown to all 50 states and other jurisdictions that work together to help reciprocal licensure across state lines as well as promote education experience and examination for architects. The reciprocity benefit that NCARB has brought to architecture has allowed architects to practice across state lines. What specifically does NCARB do for small firm architects? For small firms, there&#8217;s an experience program to identify young professionals that are seeking experience. For young professionals, that&#8217;s a great environment. Greg has a small firm of four people, and he&#8217;s found benefit through the programs of...

The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Kurt Krueger At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. Join us for our series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Kurt Krueger. Origin Story Kurt&#8217;s firm is based in Brentwood, LA, and specializes in modern design-build residential architecture.  He grew up in a small town called Mexico, Missouri, and never had any exposure to architects. He was artistic and could draw, but had no idea what to do what that moving forward. During his junior year in high school, a perceptive geometry teacher asked if he&#8217;d ever thought about being an architect. He took some basic drafting classes at the vocational school attached to the high school and found the perfect marriage between the artistic side and his propensity for using art for practical purposes. He went to college at Kansas State University and something clicked. Kurt enjoyed the drawing and design aspect of school when he found a way to combine what he loved with hard work to get good at it. During his third year in school, he interned for an architect in North Carolina. He began to learn more about his love for design and the construction/building side. When he graduated, as opposed to getting an office job, he worked for an architect in Lawrence who runs a studio called Studio 804 where the team does design-build projects. Kurt did hard work for little pay, but knew there was value in being able to learn first hand how things come together. From there, he relocated to Los Angeles because of the weather and the greater opportunities to get engaged with different architects. There can be some experimentation and craziness that he fell in love with. His construction experience got him a job with design/build architect Marmol Radziner for four years. After that, he worked for a high-profile firm doing the work for some beautiful homes. The Entrepreneur Architect Questions What is one big goal you&#8217;ve achieved in your career and how did you get there? Kurt has worked to take the structure of design-build and moving it into an architect-as-developer where they have their own clients and are able to work on projects on their own. He&#8217;s been talking about it with his firm for some time, and, for them, they had a leg up since they were already doing the things developers would do. If they had all the pieces in place to get the structure in place and get the numbers right, it was a no-brainer. It finally came down to them stop thinking about it and just doing it to see what works and what doesn&#8217;t. Though they&#8217;re early on, it&#8217;s a goal they&#8217;re in the process of getting it to where they want it to be. What is one struggle you experienced and how did you overcome it? Of course there&#8217;s the struggle of everyday practice. Kurt had a big turning point in his third year of architecture school. The first few years, there&#8217;s no computers at all. The transition to the computers and doing things with 3D design and renderings was completely new. He had little experience with computers and doubted that he could pull through. Though he had the talent and work ethic to succeed, he didn&#8217;t know if it was...

Architecture for Children with Vicky Chan One of the main struggles we hear is that the general public is ignorant of what we do as architects. If people don&apos;t know what we do, how will they ever value our services? How can we better educate and share our purpose with the world and, in doing so, increase that perceived value of the profession throughout the world. This week, Mark R. LePage talks with an architect based in New York City and Hong Kong, the founder of a thriving architecture and design firm who has found a way to educate society on the value of architecture one child at a time. This week on EntreArchitect podcast, Architecture for Children with Vicky Chan. Background Vicky is the founder of Avoid Obvious Architects, with offices in New York and Hong Kong. The firm specializes in sustainable design for buildings and cities with a focus on combining art and green technology. He also founded a volunteering organization called Architecture for Children, teaching over 3,000 children about sustainable design and architecture. Origin Story Vicky grew up in Hong Kong and his family moved to New York about 20 years ago. He always loved art and science, and didn&apos;t immediately realize that architecture was the perfect combination of the two. Throughout his academic studies, he decided to pursue architecture. After graduation, he worked at a large architecture firm, in one season working over 100 hours in a week. He decided then to get out and do something different and fund his own ideas. Along with wanting the freedom to choose his clients, Vicky began pursuing more sustainable design. Having his own business allowed him to take time out of his week to go to the local school and teach children about architecture. Vicky knows that most kids won&apos;t become architects, but he hopes to influence society toward green design. When the kids that he&apos;s teaching grow up, perhaps they&apos;ll retain the knowledge they received from him and use it to make decisions on their future homes. Through teaching children, Vicky has had many opportunities to refocus his values. He also works with special needs children, and, while other children tend to want to design things from their favorite movies or cartoons, the children with special needs want to design hospitals to help others. He learns a lot from the children. In addition to finding meaning through teaching, Vicky has also found encouragement for more innovative thinking. Instead of getting fancy and complicated, what about looking at design through the innocent lens of a child&apos;s eyes? What if the crazy ideas that kids have actually come to fruition in the near future? What&apos;s your inspiration? When Vicky was in college, he was invited into a program where he went to a local school and teach them math and English. Soon, he was encouraged to do a side project in teaching children about architecture. After that, he realized how difficult it was to teach architecture to children. He worked to refine the idea so that the children could come out with a keyword or key concept. To come up with something simple that the children can complete in a short period of time has helped him a ton with his own design. Finding the simplicity in it make it easier to understand. Vicky also learns from different cultures when teaching children in both New York and Hong Kong. In general, kids in New York are exposed to more art and are more imaginative and creative, whereas the children in Hong Kong are more practical. He works to encourage the children to fail and try things they aren&apos;t sure of so they can learn from what doesn&apos;t work....

The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Chris Bailow At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. Join us for our series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Chris Bailow. Background Chris is the Principal Architect at Bailow Architects, a custom residential design architecture firm that works in New England. The firm&#8217;s work consists of thoughtful, innovative design rooted in New England tradition. Chris works remotely Origin Story Chris felt fortunate to grow up on an island in Maine. It has a great culture and community, and it was also connected to the mainland by a bridge. When he was a kid, he spent a lot of time outdoors and would find the summer cottages of those who weren&#8217;t there any longer. He and his friends would go up on the porches and peek in the windows, and he thought about the layout and spaces of each home. That simplicity is a part of his design aesthetic to this day. As he grew up, he was interested in how things were put together and how buildings were constructed. His dad wasn&#8217;t particularly handy, but he was encouraged to explore what he was interested in. One summer, he got a job building boats. In high school, he thought he may want to be an architect. His guidance counselor pointed out his low math scores, and Chris went to a liberal arts school to level things out. Chris got a job as a carpenter and was hired by a contractor. He loved learning how to build houses, and that&#8217;s some of the most foundational learning he received. After hauling shingles for a while, he realized he did want to pursue architecture. He earned his undergraduate degree from St. Laurence and an internship in Vermont at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School. Soon he found a graduate program at the Boston Architectural College in Boston where he could work in a firm during the day and go to school in the evenings. Following school, he got a job as a mail person in a 100+ person firm. He was exposed to tons of different architects, none of whom were doing what he wanted to do. He soon got a call from a firm he&#8217;d given his resume to who was doing residential architecture in Massachusetts. After interviewing one-on-one, he got the job. There he learned to hand draft and was exposed to the elements of a small business. He was there for a few years before he hit his ceiling. Next, he went to a high-end residential firm where he was exposed to 7-8 different architects using CAD software who he got to learn from. He was confident in his abilities to pick CAD up quickly and moved around to different projects helping with whatever they needed at the time. He quickly worked himself up to an associate and project manager. Within years, he felt he was doing the same thing day-to-day and needed a new challenge. With his wife&#8217;s nudging and support, in 2014 he decided to jump out on his own. He stayed home with their son and worked on some projects, and they haven&#8217;t looked back since. The Entrepreneur Architect Questions How did it work out for you raising a child and building a business? Chris doesn&#8217;t know any other way. Raising a child is an amazing experience that taught him

For Architects, By Architects: The Story Behind ArchiOffice This week, we have another inspiring story from an architect turned accidental entrepreneur. He turned a need for managing finances at his own small firm into a new software tool to solve the problem. He shared the idea with some colleagues, formed a small company, and eventually sold that company. Today, it&#8217;s offered to architects throughout the world. This week on EntreArchitect podcast, For Architects, By Architects: the story behind ArchiOffice with Steven Burns.  Background Steven is an architect based in Los Angeles and the creator of ArchiOffice project management software. He&#8217;s currently the Chief Creative Officer of BQE Software, the makers of ArchiOffice. Steven&#8217;s Origin Story Steve majored in sculpture at Syracuse University. When he had his senior show, by accident a woman approached him and asked his plans after school. He joked that he was going to wait tables, but she prompted him to study architecture. He went to MIT for architecture, which he didn&#8217;t love, after not getting into his first choice, Harvard. After his first year, he went back and reread his application essay and decided to reapply to Harvard. This time, he got in. The second time around, his classmates and experiences were great and he thrived. After graduation, he started his career at SOM in Chicago. During his time there, he put a few goldfish in an empty bowl. People liked it, so he went and bought a tank, some sand and a fish for every partner &#8211; fourteen &#8211; with a sign that said &#8220;Please don&#8217;t feed the partners.&#8221; Within three months, every partner knew him. Eventually, Bruce Graham took an interest in Steve and helped shape much of his journey in architecture. When Steve and his wife were in Berlin working for SOM and were about to have children, they decided to take the risk to move to Chicago and Steve opened an office on his own in 1993. There was no business plan and nothing written down. After a month of working alone, he brought a friend on board to join the business. They were frugal, finding a small space and building it out on their own. Eventually they hired someone, and they felt the pressure of having to provide for them. In 2007, he sold the firm. They chose two partners and were able to watch both of them grow into the roles perfectly. They learned that their partners weren&#8217;t like them, which was good; they should be able to fill in the spaces where you have weaknesses. Steven felt that he and his partner were able to retain some control while still giving the partners some ownership of their roles. Would you do it differently if you had to do it over again? If Steven had to do it all over again, he would hope that he would at least have written some kind of business plan before starting out. However, he knows himself well enough to know his spontaneity and that, in some ways, he hasn&#8217;t changed since then. How do you pick the right person to transition your firm over to? It&#8217;s a hard decision, and you have to trust your intuition. Steve feels lucky to have had great picks with his wife and his partner, but has also learned that when you have something that isn&#8217;t a fit, it&#8217;s better to take care of it right away. In the end, it&#8217;s best for everyone. Why did you sell your company and where were you headed after that?  Steven was a designer at heart, and he wanted to work on designing a software for his firm. He bought a Mac-based program, File Maker Pro, and used their easy scripting program to build things to solve problems. He&#8217;d

Architects Practicing Beyond The Traditional Design Firm Beyond The Box Architects are trained to find solutions. We have a superpower many other people don&#8217;t have: we can see a problem and create a way to solve it. This gives us a huge opportunity to lead both as traditional practitioners and in roles in our society that require creativity and solutions for critical problems. This week on EntreArchitect podcast, Beyond the Box: Architects Practicing Beyond The Traditional Design Firm with Katie Crepeau. Background Katie is an architect and a business consultant based in London, England. She&#8217;s an advocate for and a practitioner of social impact design. She&#8217;s the founder and editor for Design Affects, an online platform that inspires, teaches and connects those involved in social impact design and much more. Origin Story The earliest memory Katie has of engaging with architecture is around the age of five when she was living in a home she was moving out of. She remembers drawing the plan of her bedroom, complete with the red-orange carpet, and she added all the various elements of that space. Katie&#8217;s dad is an engineer and her mom is a teacher who studied art, so a big influence was seeing both of their personalities and approaches to doing things. Both of them inspired Katie and her family to be creative: her dad was focused on precision and technique, and her mom on the expression of creativity. As she began studying and practicing, she wanted to connect with people. Katie studied at Tulane in New Orleans, a very different and distant place from where she grew up in California. There she explored and grew in a new city around new people and was able to define who she was as a person. She thought she&#8217;d be pursuing the traditional architecture path, but she&#8217;s also aware that she&#8217;s a &#8220;question-asking&#8221; type of person. Following graduation and licensing, she wanted to improve the profession of architecture and reconnect it to who we are as people and to the people we&#8217;re trying to impact in the first place. Early in her career, Katie worked with small firms that did residential and urban repurpose and regeneration in New Orleans. When she moved to San Francisco, she got more involved with commercial and developer-led projects. Her background, including volunteering and seeing the change in people because of her giving, led her to take a night course from Berkley called Architecture is Activism. Then began the journey of the next six years of her life to focus on social impact design. What is social impact design? Social impact design is working with marginalized or underserved communities and developing products or services that help them create a better environment for themselves. It includes architecture, systems, and everything that comes along with it. Eventually, Katie became an advocate for social impact design. Though working with a group of architects who were all pressing toward the same goal but lacking a certain business acumen, Katie started looking at other firms who were doing similar things. What is your advice for someone who has a problem they want to solve? Katie advises people to start with a project. Don&#8217;t start an organization until you have a project and a client and can validate the demand for what you&#8217;re doing. She has a ton of eagerness as well, and a lot of her early projects reflect that. In actuality, it&#8217;s about validating your idea before you do anything. Identify the people you want to help,

Working Toward an Equitable Future in Architecture This week, the Chair of the AIA National Equity in Architecture Commission, Emily Grandstaff-Rice, FAIA, shares an update on the work that the commission has done to promote equity and diversity in the profession of architecture. How is the AIA working to make the changes needed to have the profession of architecture more accurately represent the society in which we live? What&#8217;s planned for a more equitable future? This week on EntreArchitect podcast, Working Toward an Equitable Future in Architecture with Emily Grandstaff-Rice, FAIA. For Emily&#8217;s origin story, visit Episode 014. Boston Society of Architects Though Emily had never been the chair of a board of directors this size, at the beginning of this journey she jumped right in and got to meet the mayor of Boston and the mayor of Rome. During her tenure as President of the BSA, she became more comfortable in the public eye and developed leadership skills that she hadn&#8217;t encountered in her day-to-day architecture life. Equity in Architecture At the end of 2015, Emily was asked to chair the AIA National Equity in Architecture Commission. Though she felt fear and had some reservations about taking on such a responsibility, she knew she couldn&#8217;t say no. At the end of the commission, they presented 11 recommendations (see below) to the AIA Board of Directors with the goal of having the profession of architecture reflect the society that we serve. Emily recognizes this as some of the most important work she&#8217;s done in her career. One the commission&#8217;s recommendations was to create a stronger pathway for students to go from community colleges to accredited degrees and to increase the number of scholarships aimed at diversity. Following the presentation, the AIA donated $1 million toward diversity advancement scholarships, funding 20 new school scholarships. Creating Awareness Based on research, making the profession of architecture diverse isn&#8217;t a &#8220;one size fits all&#8221; solution. It&#8217;s very nuanced, and has to be something that reaches to various levels because of different people and their unique approaches to the profession. As architects, we should be asking how we can be role models in our community. Can you go to the local career day at your school? Should you stand up for something within your influence? Create awareness in the public realm to what we do and how we change the environment, and we&#8217;ll make a difference.  11 Recommendations to AIA National Board of Directors Make equity, diversity, and inclusion a core value for the Board of Directors Measure and report how EDI permeates the AIA Launch EDI training for AIA volunteers and components Create guides for equitable, diverse, and inclusive practice Create a position paper on EDI and the profession Develop a firm self-assessment tool Require EDI data as part of AIA awards submissions Advocate for a more accessible path to higher education Engage children with K-12 architecture programs Tell our stories Ensure that AIA publications reflect EDI To read more about all 11 of the commission&#8217;s recommendations, <a...

Finding MyCORBU with Rick Wolnitzek Retired from the profession and finding himself eager to give back, today&#8217;s guest has partnered with a developer to create an app that helps small firm architects manage their time and money. After a long journey, he&#8217;s launching the product he wishes he had when he was the owner of his own small architecture firm. This week on EntreArchitect podcast, Finding MyCORBU with Rick Wolnitzek. Introduction Rick Wolnikzek is an architect based in northern Kentucky outside of Cincinnati and the creator of ArchitekWiki, a blog for small firms covering ideas, information, links, procedures, checklists, details and more to help young architects work productively and effectively. He&#8217;s also the founder of MyCORBU, a bookkeeping software specifically for architects. Origin Story In high school, Rick knew he wanted to be an architect. The idea of creating things like tunnels and camps as a kid pushed him toward the idea. He planned to go to the University of Cincinnati, but an influx of in-state applicants foiled his plans. His dad proposed Notre Dame, and in hindsight, his schooling there was a highlight of his career. Following his education, he worked for a small, five-person firm for the next seven years working on schools. There he learned to do a wide array of tasks due to the limited staff. He joined a mentor who had started a new firm, and years in the frustration of not having a ton to do and lack of willingness to try new things ate him up over time. It was there that Rick made a trade that if his partner would go get their coffee across the street, Rick would manage the books. Rick eventually decided to go out on his own in Cincinnati, and he found that he didn&#8217;t have as much of a stature that he wanted. Suddenly, he had a client who needed an office building and then a connection for another project. He had always done back-office things well, but struggled with doing business development. In 30 years, Rick&#8217;s firm fluctuated between two and twelve people. Toward the end of the road, Rick let go of most of his employees and was writing checks to keep the firm afloat. He decided to work from home, and struck a deal with his landlord to get out of the lease early in exchange for some office furniture. Eight months later, he realized he had actually retired. He thought, &#8220;Maybe I could make a living selling things to help other architects.&#8221; Soon after he launched ArchitekWiki. The Blog For the first year, Rick wrote a post every few days to share his experiences. He wanted to go back to the tools he&#8217;d developed over his career and put them into a format that might be useful to other architects, such as a how-to on Trello for project management, a calculation tool, and more. The App Two years into his retirement, he was out of the software that he&#8217;d used when he was practicing architecture. Rick was using a time-keeping software that he liked, but he was constantly trying to improve it for the use of architects. Eventually, the developer met with Rick to ask him to help develop something specifically for architects. He interviewed about 75 architects and surveyed 1500 firms over six months, and they learned that there wasn&#8217;t a great way for architects to invoice. Although their dreams were big, they encountered a lot of difficulties of how to actually develop a program for invoicing. By the end of the year, the partnership was nickel-and-diming back and

The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Michele Grace Hottel At EntreArchitect, you&#8217;re encouraged to share your knowledge. When we share with other architects, we all benefit. We are able to learn from one another and the profession will grow. One of the goals of EntreArchitect is to provide a platform for other entrepreneur architects to share their stories. After 162 episodes, we think we&#8217;ve succeeded with that goal. Join us for a new series called The Entrepreneur Architect, where each guest has the opportunity to share their story and answer some questions that will provide value to each of you. This week on EntreArchitect podcast, The Entrepreneur Architect Series featuring Michele Grace Hottel. Origin Story Michele has been practicing architecture at her own firm, Michele Grace Hottel Architects, since 1994 and is licensed in California and Texas. She is a commissioner and subject matter expert for California Architects board and the City of La Mesa planning commissioner. As an active member of the #ArchiTalk blog series, you can read her blog &#8220;I&#8217;ve never met a woman architect before&#8230;&#8220;, about the trials and tribulations of being a woman architect, wife and mother. Michele has loved drawing since she was very young. During a kindergarten testing process, she was asked to draw a picture of a person. She chose to draw a picture of her tester, to his amusement, and they let her in. Growing up outside of Pittsburgh where everyone had art and music in school, Michele was invited with a group of students to be a part of a weekend art group with her art teacher. From then on, she was encouraged by her artistic talents. Later in her schooling, the switch was made from girls taking home-ec and the boys taking woodworking to a more inclusive environment, Michele was able to take woodworking which included a drafting class. Throughout high school, she continued with art classes at the Art Institute, architectural drafting, and took classes at a technical school for mechanical drafting and design technology. Her family then moved to California and after transferring to Cal Poly Pamona for a few years, she was able to go abroad to Denmark for a  year for the cost of in-state tuition. After her degree, she worked in Santa Monica for a few years, worked for her stepdad for a few years and spent time on various projects, including a Metropolitan Community Church, an AIDS memorial wall, affordable housing in Santa Monica, and high-end custom residential work for people in the entertainment industry. After having her daughter and thinking about the work/family balance, she wondered if she would be able to practice architecture in the traditional sense. She decided to do a few projects a year and has been doing that ever since. The Entrepreneur Architect Questions What is one big goal you&#8217;ve achieved in your career and how did you get there? Michele&#8217;s biggest goal she&#8217;s achieved is getting licensed. When Michele was going through this process, it was only available to be taken once a year and she took them all at once. Despite people telling her that she wouldn&#8217;t pass on the first round, she studied hard and passed on her first take. What is one struggle you experienced and how did you overcome it? Michele never passed college algebra. Though she tried to take it last year, she found it much more difficult to do at this point in her career. Additionally, she&#8217;s worked hard to be an architect and a stay at home mom. When she was in LA after

The Pain, the Passion, and the Process of Becoming a Young Architect Let&#8217;s dive deep into what it means to be a young architect and what it takes to get licensed. This week at EntreArchitect Podcast, Michael Riscica of YoungArchitect.com shares The Pain, the Passion, and the Process of Becoming a Young Architect. Origin Story Michael is based in Portland, Oregon is the founder of YoungArchitect.com. You can hear more about his bike journey from one side of the US to the other, plus how to get licensed and pass the ARE, check out his last podcast appearance. &nbsp; Young Architect Michael started Young Architect about three years ago after he got his license, with inspiration from Mark and many other bloggers serving their community. The mission has always been to help students, ARE candidates, young architects and other candidates be more successful. More recently he&#8217;s been talking more about how to share his mission and beliefs with others. Many young architects really need to be their own advocate, and, in Michael&#8217;s opinion, a lot of students graduate and flounder until they become a licensed architect. Although there&#8217;s a lot out there to create community with the AIA and other organizations, there&#8217;s an in-between stage that Michael wanted to address. He began writing blog posts clearly directed at those in different predicaments like looking for jobs, studying for the ARE and wanting to get licensed. Everyone has their own path, strengths and weaknesses, and the beautiful thing about architecture is that there&#8217;s such a huge place in jobs and opportunities with people with different strengths. Everyone has different gifts and passions to offer to the world. Different Roles Architecture school is a place for future architects to learn how to design and problem solve. It creates a safe place for students to experiment and take risk, while learning the fundamentals of design. They can learn to express themselves by learning from theory and from the past. Michael argues that so much growth and development needs to happen in architecture school, that having a complete understanding of how the profession works is too much to ask. You&#8217;re there to learn the basics of problem solving and design. The second part of an architect&#8217;s education begins once they finish school. He&#8217;s always believed that the young architect&#8217;s job is to advocate for their own development, but the profession as a whole should acknowledge their role in helping engender future architects. Although young architects may take an experience and learn from it and then move onto something else, that&#8217;s a necessary component of the process. Letting a younger intern person into your firm, acknowledges that, in some ways, they&#8217;re the future of the firm. They get to see the behind-the-scenes in the firm. In some ways, you need to treat the younger generation as though they may one day be your future client or even supervisor. On the other hand, young architects need to acknowledge the role they&#8217;re in: observing and learning to become the best that they can. You may not start out making what you want to make, but you can give everything you have to who you&#8217;re working with to get the knowledge you need to get to the next level. When you work hard and prove your value, you&#8217;re rewarded. Fluidity Like many other professions, architecture has moved into a space where people are not at one job for

SketchUp for Architects SketchUp is a great tool for small firm architects to quickly develop 2D ideas into full, 3D models. It&#8217;s not BIM and it may not be super efficient for our whole workflow, but when used as a quick way to develop concepts, to share ideas with colleagues or to present to a client early on, that&#8217;s where SketchUp thrives. There are few programs better suited. This week at EntreArchitect Podcast, SketchUp for Architects with Mike LaValley, founder of EvolvingArchitect.com. Mike&#8217;s Origin Story Mike has always known that he wanted to be an architect, aside from brief childhood memories of wanting to be a mad scientist. He grew up playing with legos and making things, and eventually found his way to architecture. He graduated from Syracuse University with a bachelor&#8217;s of architecture and settled down in Buffalo, New York. He&#8217;s been through several different jobs, but is now designing spaces for K-12 schools to help kids learn and grow. After earning his license in 2015, he took the plunge into full-force blogging quickly after. Evolving Architect Blog Mike loves learning and sharing and has a desire to stay up with new ways of building and innovative technologies. Since architecture is always changing and evolving, he believes the most successful architects are those who really take that to heart. More recently he&#8217;s started to teach more on his website and via YouTube by hosting Workshop Wednesdays, where he shares his knowledge on different topics for about an hour to help emerging professionals. He quickly noticed a need for skills in programs, and was able to focus a couple workshops on SketchUp. The workshop is designed to teach architects in a way that they would use it in a firm, from learning an interface to creating a house model. Mike feels a need for varying ideas for growth depending on where different professionals are in their journeys, making Evolving Architect a constantly-changing opportunity. Workshop Wednesdays Each month, Mike posts a new video on the Evolving Architect YouTube channel. His goal is to bounce around different topics that people have brought to his attention, including goal-setting and ARE help. This year, Mike plans to integrate content throughout the month for subscribers where they might find short tutorials and other helpful tips. SketchUp for Architects Mike&#8217;s been using SketchUp since he was a sophomore in college over 10 years ago and has been using it regularly since then. He began using it because it was so simple to create 3D models in real time. It&#8217;s a great way to quickly iterate and conceptualize different concepts he wants to bring forth. It&#8217;s the first tutorial on his website because he wanted to show how to use it specifically in an architecture office. Mike uses SketchUp primarily as a way to quickly communicate and present very raw models and ideas to clients who aren&#8217;t familiar with reading 2D drawings. It&#8217;s a practical tool that allows him to explain an idea through an image without trying to build a detailed physical model. SketchUp has it&#8217;s limitations too. Mike prefers to use platforms like Revit or AutoCad for other aspects of his work. Sketching in 3D Once you install SketchUp on your device and start playing with the tools, you can get into drawing in 3D. You can extrude them and build on them to make more complicated figures, but it&#8217;s productive to start playing around with the platform and learning how to draw in three dimensions. SketchUp also allows you create

Questions from the EntreArchitect Community As an active community of entrepreneur architects, we&#8217;ve come together to build better businesses. We&#8217;re working together to build a better profession. Every day, we see the willingness to share our collective knowledge every day on the EntreArchitect Facebook Group. Members are sharing their struggles and not only are they benefiting as individuals, but each business is growing stronger every day. This week at EntreArchitect Podcast, Mark R. LePage answers Questions from the EntreArchitect Community. For initial client meetings on a domestic project, do you let the client take the lead with their requirements/ideas/tour of the house while drinking coffee or do you take control with a meeting agenda? While everyone does their own thing, and you kind of have to figure out what works best for you. Here&#8217;s how Mark typically does things: The initial meeting process starts with a telephone call to manage the client&#8217;s expectations. Use a form to make sure you&#8217;re asking the same questions every time. The more information you collect upfront, the better. Take all the information you have and qualify the client to ensure you&#8217;re not wasting your time with a project you don&#8217;t really want or by throwing away valuable time in your day. After confirming that they&#8217;re the right fit, set expectations for your meeting including time limits, steps you&#8217;re planning to take, and what will happen after the meeting. Let your clients feel more comfortable with you in the lead since they don&#8217;t know what to expect. Let them know you want to go on a tour right away and allow them to talk; what can they tell you about what they like or don&#8217;t like about the house? Will they receive a proposal or follow up prior to the initial meeting with you? I was inspired to make the switch from CAD to BIM, so despite a busy schedule, I immersed myself in tutorials from Lynda.com. I&#8217;ve done lots of learning, but I&#8217;m feeling overwhelmed by the depths of this program. I&#8217;m trying to take the advice to just go forward and not switch back and forth, but I am so nervous. I feel like I&#8217;ve overloaded myself with information that I won&#8217;t remember. I&#8217;m a one-woman show who works from home doing residential/condo work while raising children. Does anyone else have this anxiety about switching over?  As a small firm, Mark knows how it feels to work hard from home while raising a family. It&#8217;s painful to make the transition from CAD to BIM, you&#8217;re certainly not alone there. So far, Mark has reviewed the options and narrowed it down to Revit and ArchiCad. Now, the goal is to design a floor plan in 3D and see which program works best for him. Once you get into it, you will hopefully know which one works best for you. To be totally transparent, Mark had to switch back to AutoCad at one point to adhere to a deadline. However, the plan is to move onto the next phase in ArchiCad. It&#8217;s okay to switch over if you need to, but don&#8217;t abandon the commitment. It&#8217;s taken a tremendous amount of time to learn and get set up, but not as much time as it took him to decide to make the transition. The biggest fear is exactly what happened: there&#8217;s so much going on and it&#8217;s not necessarily a need to make the switch, but Mark wants to keep up with new software and be proficient in it. With perseverance, soon enough, BIM will be second nature. My practice has gotten a lot busier lately, and, so far,...