Sun, 30 June 2019
Today I welcome Kevin Collins to the show. Kevin Collins is the Underwriting Manager for the Professional Liability program at Victor O. Schinnerer & Company, one of the largest providers of professional liability insurance for architects and engineers. We discuss the top 5 things you should consider when getting professional liability insurance. ► Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for updates: https://www.youtube.com/c/BusinessofArchitecture ******* For more free tools and resources for running a profitable, impactful and fulfilling practice, connect with me on: ******* Access the FREE Architecture Firm Profit Map video here: http://freearchitectgift.com Download the FREE Architecture Firm Marketing Process Flowchart video here: http://freearchitectgift.com Come to my next live, in-person event: https://www.businessofarchitecture.com/live Carpe Diem!
Direct download: ep289-5-error-omission-insurance-considerations-kevin-collins.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:08pm PDT |
Sat, 29 June 2019
The Theory of Constraints is a management theory developed by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt. He discusses it in his popular book, The Goal. The theory states that every system's output will be limited by it's weakest link. For instance, if you're doing an exercise - say squats, the amount you can lift will be limited by the muscle that gives out first when trying to lift the weight. In a building structural system, the integrity of the building is limited by the element that fails first. In a business system, if you can identify the constraint, you can work to pro-actively fix it, improving the efficiency and output of the entire system. This theory simplifies the improvement of your business - just find the weakest link, improve it, iterate, then find the next weakest link. Recently on a trip to the beach I had an experience that reminded me of the theory of constraints. My brother-in-law brought a fabric cooler he had gotten at Costco. The lid of the cooler is sealed shut with a zipper. The zipper broke, and now the entire cooler is useless. The cooler fell prey to the Theory of Constraints. If the manufacturer had designed a sturdier zipper, the cooler would have lasted longer - and another part would have failed first. What I'd have you consider today is what is the constraint in your business that is holding you back from getting the outcome you want? Identify this constraint and fix it. If you don't know how to fix it, consult with someone who does. If you want help fixing the constraints in your architecture firm, apply for the DREAM Practice Accelerator. Go to https://www.businessofarchitecture.com/reviews to find out more. |
Fri, 28 June 2019
What is holding you back? You're working hard to get specific results, but there are so many obstacles in your way. The ArchitectCEO Update: What if I told you that the only thing that is holding you back is you?!? It isn't what's on the outside – your employees, your spouse, your education or lack thereof – You're the one that is responsible for your results in your life. You're the one that is holding you back. This can be a hard pill to swallow, but it's also empowering because you have 100% of the power needed to change your situation and the life you're living. To learn more about how to create your DREAM Architecture practice, go to http://architectresources.org/9mjd7s |
Thu, 27 June 2019
This morning as I was doing my daily workout, I looked up and saw a little sparrow chasing a crow. This brought to mind the parable of the crows vs the eagle. Listen and let me know what you think. Enoch |
Wed, 26 June 2019
On this episode, you'll discover the parable of "Red on Right on Return" and discover one simple way to differentiate your architecture firm.
Direct download: red-on-right-on-return-differentiation.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:52pm PDT |
Tue, 25 June 2019
This morning as I pulled into my neighborhood, I saw a stack of white papers littering the side of the road. They had begun to blow down the street creating a huge eye-sore. As I drove past I wondered, “who will clean up those papers?” My initial reaction was to leave them for someone else to clean up. Then I realized that no one else would clean them up. They would likely sit there for days littering the street and blowing into adjacent yards if someone didn't collect them up. I realized that if they bothered me, it was up to me to clean them up. So I turned my car around, parked on the side of the street and collected the stack of papers and all the strays. This experience is similar to all areas of life, including business. I have figurative ‘papers' littering my life, my business, my relationships and my health. These are the things that are keeping me from getting the result I want in life. Instead of recognizing them and cleaning them up, I continue to let them blow around in the wind. For example, in my business one team member has the duty to fill out a spreadsheet at the end of the day. The reason for doing this is so that I can see where the business is headed and make corrections if necessary. Well, yesterday afternoon I noticed that the spreadsheet hadn't been filled out. I had an internal conflict. Should I point this out to this team member and risk making this person feel annoyed or defensive? Or should I just let it go? Then I realized that if I ignore the small but important things, big things follow. New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani cleaned up Manhattan by cracking down on small offenses like littering and jay-walking. Because of his attention to the small things, New York City saw a steep decline in both violent crimes and quality-of-life crimes. Attention to the small stuff created a new culture in New York City. The same principle applies in your business. What culture are you creating by either ignoring or not ignoring the small stuff – both for yourself and your staff? The question I'd have you consider today is this: Where across the domains of body, being, balance and business do you have figurative ‘papers' blowing around that need to be cleaned up? Where are you driving by and letting them litter your neighborhood without taking action? Write that thing down and make a decision, do you want this part of your neighborhood littered or clean? Then take the steps to make it happen. If you know you have a lot of papers blowing around and you want a shortcut to cleaning them up and building the firm of your dreams, you may be a fit for my DREAM Practice Accelerator. Go here to find out more and discover if the DREAM Practice Accelerator is for you. Carpe diem. Enoch Bartlett Sears |
Mon, 24 June 2019
How you do one thing is how you do everything.The bad (and good) habits that we have repeat through all areas of life. This is a concept that one of my business mentors taught me years ago. Recently I took a hard look at my life and what I'm doing and I noticed this pattern showing up. First let me share an incident that reminded me of this recently, and then I'll share how I saw this pop up in my own life. Two weeks ago I was attending a business seminar. One guy out of our group was continually late to the sessions. When he finally arrived, he sat off to the side at the front of the room. After repeatedly seeing this guy walk in late, the man running the seminar confronted him. “You came to this seminar to learn how to improve your business. But you're showing up late. You're not engaging in the exercises and you're not even taking notes. Do you care about your f**ing business or not? The message I'm getting is that you don't care … you aren't ALL IN.” “How you do ONE THING is how you do EVERYTHING. My guess is that this habit shows up in other areas of your business and life. And this is one major reason why you aren't getting the results that you want.” Boom. I felt bad for the guy that was on the receiving end of this fire – he was stone-faced and silent, but he knew what the trainer was saying was true. How I Saw This In My LifeYesterday was Sunday, and I was at church with my family. One of my church responsibilities is to find someone to give an opening prayer and someone to give a closing prayer for the church service. I was sitting up on the stand waiting for the service to start with about one minute left. Suddenly, the Bishop (leader of the congregation) leans over to me and asks me if I had asked anyone to offer the prayers. Doh! I hadn't. It was all I could do to keep from letting loose an expletive there in front of the congregation – that would have been a meeting to remember! Feeling a temporary burst of embarrassment, I quickly stepped down from the stand and found two unwitting, but willing, victims in the congregation and asked them to give the prayers. Fortunately, they obliged. So what lesson did I learn from this? How you do one thing is how you do everything. I've always told myself that I'm not a ‘details' guy. This is the story I tell myself about who I am. I realize that lack of attention to the details is a repeated pattern for me (no surprise here). But my attitude changed when I considered how this habit is showing up in other areas of my life. Fortunately, I can change. So this moment of recognition allows me to take some actions and change my ways. If I can achieve what I've achieved without attention to the details, imagine what I can do when I become the person who handles not only the big picture, but the attention to details! This is how I like to think about things. What I'd have you consider today is this: Where in your business or your life do you have a pattern of doing something that is sabotaging the results you want to get? Perhaps you aren't even aware of this thing. Write that thing down in your journal and ask yourself the question, how is this pattern showing up in other areas of my life? What can I do to change it? That's all for today. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Carpe diem. Enoch Bartlett Sears |
Sun, 23 June 2019
"The way we build is stupid," proclaims sustainable evangelist and architect Eric Corey Freed. In this episode of the Business of Architecture Show, you'll discover how some companies are innovating how buildings are built and what's possible in the future. ► Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for updates: https://www.youtube.com/c/BusinessofArchitecture ******* For more free tools and resources for running a profitable, impactful and fulfilling practice, connect with me on: ******* Access the FREE Architecture Firm Profit Map video here: http://freearchitectgift.com Download the FREE Architecture Firm Marketing Process Flowchart video here: http://freearchitectgift.com Come to my next live, in-person event: https://www.businessofarchitecture.com/live Carpe Diem!
Direct download: ep288-the-way-we-build-is-stupid-eric-corey-freed.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:00pm PDT |
Sun, 23 June 2019
This morning I did a morning jaunt around my neighborhood. As I was walking, I saw a man coming toward me walking two dogs. The dogs were pulling at the leash, trying to sniff everything. You may have experienced this before. They pulled toward the sidewalk, trying to smell the bushes. When I walked past, they pulled toward me, trying to get a sniff. As I was watching this, I had the thought, “Is the man walking the dogs, or are the dogs walking the man?” If the dogs are walking the man, the man has little to no control over the journey or where he ends up. He's reacting to circumstances. He might end up all the way across town where he doesn't want to be. Or he may end up in the park running after squirrels. 😄 What I'd have you consider today is this: where in your business, your relationships, your health and fitness or your faith are the dogs walking you? Where are you reacting to circumstances in your life instead of creating the circumstances that you want which lead you to where you want to go? As you've read this parable, something may have come to mind. Write it down, and figure out what you can do to be intentional so you don't end up across town or in the park chasing squirrels ... Carpe diem. |
Sat, 22 June 2019
This morning my 7-year old daughter showed me a drawing that she did of a ‘remote control doll.' Apparently this is what 7-year-old girls like to think about. On one side of the page she drew a picture of the remote, complete with a viewing screen, speaker and microphone so she could talk through the doll. On the reverse side of the page, she had a picture of the back of the doll with an outlet in her head (for charging my daughter told me).  Drawing of the ‘rumote cuncurll' Drawing of the doll. Notice the power outlet in the back of the doll's head for charging.You'll notice that she's misspelled a lot of the words. ‘Rumote' instead of ‘remote.' ‘Toc' instead of ‘talk.' ‘Cis' instead of ‘kiss.' At first I was troubled that my daughter who is 7 years old doesn't know how to spell simple words like ‘kiss' and ‘talk.' Then I remembered that she's only 7 years old, and the way that she's going to learn to spell more words is by actually trying! Interesting – the way we grow and progress is by actually doing stuff – even if we get it wrong! Seth Godin writes about this concept and calls it ‘shipping' (refering to ‘shipping the product). Here's an excerpt from a post that Seth Godin wrote talking about this:
Where in your life or business are you holding back because you're afraid to ship something and get it out to the world? Where in life or business are you figuratively curled up in a ball trying to avoid risk, but putting yourself on the path to failure? Where in life do you have an idea, a project or a product that you need to ship? Let's get after it today. Enoch Bartlett Sears |
Fri, 21 June 2019
Yesterday I took my kids to their swim meet. It was cool outside with a nice breeze blowing. I stood in the stands so I could watch my kids swim and record their times. In my down time, I was scrolling through Instagram and I came across a post by one of my business mentors who recommended 3 books, The Ultimate Blueprint for an Insanely Successful Business by Keith Cunningham, and How Finance Works and The Wisdom of Finance by Mihir Desai. I pulled out my Android phone and whipped up Google Keep so I could write these books down and read them later. But when I tried writing in my Google Keep note app, nothing happened. I tried pressing enter to go to a new line and it was like my on-screen keyboard wasn't working. I tried typing some letters … nothing appeared. I got frustrated. “Damn you Google!” I tried again, nothing. I thought of what could be the matter. Perhaps it was my phone. Damn Google phone. I restarted my phone and tried the app again. It still didn't work. I thought, “I guess it's time to buy a new phone.” And then it dawned on me. Google Keep has a character limit for notes, and I had reached the character limit for this particular note I was taking. Here I was, ready to throw my phone to the curb, when I was mistaken about the root of my problem. I was on a wild goose chase fixing something that wasn't broken. So here's today's parable – where in your architecture firm are you experiencing a symptom, and you haven't identified the root cause? For instance, maybe clients are complaining about the level of your fees. What does this mean? Does it mean that you're charging too much? Should you lower your fees to be more competitive? It could mean that you're in the wrong market – all the clients are cost focused. Or it could mean that you aren't explaining your value well. Or it could mean that you aren't doing enough activities to generate inquiries and interest in your firm. All of these are problems, but they all have different solutions. Do you see the problem here? If you blindly try to fix the symptom without correctly identifying the underlying problem, you're doomed to waste time and money. Let's take our previous example – say clients frequently question your fees or you get undercut by other firms. You assume that clients don't see the value of what you offer because your website isn't nice enough. So you spend $20k on a new website. But nothing changes. You still lose projects because you are “too expensive” even though you now have a sexy website. Accurately diagnosing the underlying cause of a symptom is key to growing in your business and personal life. So my question for you today is: where in your firm is something happening that you want to avoid, but you haven't identified the underlying root cause of this problem? |
Thu, 20 June 2019
Yesterday I spoke with the partners of a design-focused architecture firm that does commercial, hospitality and residential projects. They reached out to me because their fees are very competitive, but they sometimes get undercut by 40% or more. Many times the clients come back to them with their tail between their legs after these projects go off track – but not always. This is frustrating for these firm owners who feel like they're doing everything right, but still struggling. Let's face it – both you and I know if a client pays 40% less they aren't getting the same level of professional service. It's like getting heart surgery – would you go to the cheapest surgeon? “Excuse me doctor, that seems a bit on the high side. Is there any way you can bring that fee down? There's a doctor operating behind a local bar, and he charges a fraction of that.” “Perhaps there are less expensive sutures? Is all of this equipment really necessary? My brother-in-law says this should cost much less.” “What if we do this at my house instead of the operating room? My son can hold the flashlight while you work.” “That would save a lot of money, right?” This seems ridiculous when we think about it in a medical context, yet this is the trap that some clients get caught in – they focus on the short term impact of the design fees instead of considering the long-term value of investing in design up-front. So instead they play the game of chasing change orders and the project ends up costing more than it would have if the client had simply invested in doing the project correctly the first time. If you've ever been frustrated by other firms undercutting your fees, then watch the video up above and let me know what you think. If you want help getting out of the fee race to the bottom, you may be a fit for my DREAM Practice Accelerator program. Click here to watch a 60-minute training on how to create your DREAM Practice or click here to see program reviews. |
Wed, 19 June 2019
The other day I was walking around my neighborhood and I found a stray golf ball on my lawn. This reminded me of an important principle if you want to have it all in business and life. Listen to this episode and let me know what you think! |
Tue, 18 June 2019
Many architects are sitting on uncovered profit within their firm. In this episode, podcast host Alex Gore interviews Enoch Sears about key profit levers small firm owners can use to boost bottom line revenue without getting more clients or working more hours. ► Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for updates: https://www.youtube.com/c/BusinessofArchitecture ******* For more free tools and resources for running a profitable, impactful and fulfilling practice, connect with me on: ******* Access the FREE Architecture Firm Profit Map video here: http://freearchitectgift.com Download the FREE Architecture Firm Marketing Process Flowchart video here: http://freearchitectgift.com Come to my next live, in-person event: https://www.businessofarchitecture.com/live Carpe Diem!
Direct download: ep287-architecture-firm-profit-levers-enoch-sears-alex-gore.mp3.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:00am PDT |
Mon, 17 June 2019
Poop in the toilet (business lesson on inspecting what you expect). Recently one of our toilets in the house went out of commission. This reminded me of an important business lesson for any firm owner. Listen and let me know what you think.
Direct download: 20190617-inspect-what-you-expect-final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:13pm PDT |
Sun, 16 June 2019
Why don't potential clients come running to my firm? If you're delivering exceptional service and value to your clients, you may wonder why clients don't come running to your firm? Why don't more people refer you? There is one key to successful client attraction and business development that we cover in this episode. This is the foundation to growing a successful practice in the future.
Direct download: 20190616-why-clients-dont-come-running.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00pm PDT |
Mon, 10 June 2019
Today we welcome Ignacio Rodriguez to the show. Ignacio Rodriguez runs an architecture firm based in Los Angeles, California that specializes in luxury residential homes of $15,000 square feet and more. On today's episode you'll discover the clever way that Ignacio and his wife started their residential design firm, and how they grew it over the course of 6 years to win larger commissions. ► Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for updates: https://www.youtube.com/c/BusinessofArchitecture ******* For more free tools and resources for running a profitable, impactful and fulfilling practice, connect with me on: ******* Access the FREE Architecture Firm Profit Map video here: http://freearchitectgift.com Download the FREE Architecture Firm Marketing Process Flowchart video here: http://freearchitectgift.com Come to my next live, in-person event: https://www.businessofarchitecture.com/live Carpe Diem!
Direct download: ep286-starting-growing-residential-architecture-firm-ignacio-rodriguez.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:00am PDT |
Mon, 3 June 2019
Today we welcome Dean Lincoln Hyers to the show. Dean helps architecture firms win commissions through interview and presentation coaching to help them communicate their value and win the deal. He and his partner are the authors of the book, "Winning AEC Interviews." The deals they've been involved in have resulted in over $4.5 billion in project wins, including the USBANK stadium, where the 2018 Super Bowl was held. On today's episode you'll discover Dean's top 3 tips for winning your next project presentation. ► Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for updates: https://www.youtube.com/c/BusinessofArchitecture ******* For more free tools and resources for running a profitable, impactful and fulfilling practice, connect with me on: ******* Access the FREE Architecture Firm Profit Map video here: http://freearchitectgift.com Download the FREE Architecture Firm Marketing Process Flowchart video here: http://freearchitectgift.com Come to my next live, in-person event: https://www.businessofarchitecture.com/live Carpe Diem!
Direct download: ep285-winning-aec-interviews-dean-hyers.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:00am PDT |
Business of Architecture Podcast
Discover strategies, tips and secrets for running a fun, flexible and profitable architecture practice. The focus here is simple: discussion of ways for architects to create a dream architecture practice: design what you want, when you want, and get paid well for it.
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