Architecture, And: Business Development

A I'm Evelyn Lee. And I'm Janine Chastain. We're collaborating on curated conversations to explore how the industry of architecture is changing.

B Together, we'll find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. Welcome to Practice Disrupted. Hello, listeners. Hello, Janine. Hi, Evelyn. Hi, Disruptors. So today, we're talking non program and design related careers in tech, and we're gonna throw in creating on the LinkedIn platform. There are so many individuals in the profession that reach out to the platform.

B There are so many individuals in the profession that reach out to me and I think others about alternative careers in tech, and they always tend to be on the UX or design side of things. And they ask me questions about what boot camps I need to go to to learn about coding. I always look forward to having individuals like Tyler on the show that can broaden the conversation.

A I think today is gonna be a really fun conversation. I first met Tyler. I think it's almost been a year when he first started posting on LinkedIn, provocative little posts about how architects should change the way they practice, I was immediately interested and reached out and he's continued to grow his audience and expand the message that he's trying to communicate to the architects in our industry about change and how to elevate their businesses. And so today, we're really excited to welcome Tyler onto the show.

C Thank you so much, Janine and Evelyn. I am so excited to be here.

A Yeah. We are excited to have you, and I have a feeling we're gonna dip into some provocative, interesting conversations today and hopefully help our audience think about all the many ways that they can disrupt practice.

C Yes. Let's be provocateurs.

B So I think Janine and I were a little bit ambiguous about what it is that you actually do. I mean, we didn't necessarily say it other than you post to LinkedIn. So why don't you introduce yourself, tell us what you do during your day job, and let's start there.

C Yeah. My name is Tyler Sumala, and I work in business development at Monograph. And then, on the side, I run Tyler Tactics, which is a weekly newsletter that helps architects win projects that they want for fees that they deserve.

B Yeah. So business development at a tech firm, and I think we all are big fans of monograph here. Janine, maybe we should link in the show notes to other Monograph individuals that we've had on the podcast as well, including most of the founders, I believe. But let's discuss your career path to monograph because you started out similar to the story that Janine and I have in practice.

C Yeah. Right? We all do we all kind of jump around a little bit. I think I've been I've been in the orbit of architecture for, like, the last decade or so working in internships, working in small and large firms, running my own little design studio for a couple of years. Basically, got a little bit burned out from that process. When I had started my own studio at the time, I had done it just because I hadn't quite found a firm that I wanted to be at long term yet. So, you know, that's the normal thought process. Right? I can't find it, so let me just make it. Not as easy.

C Not as easy, but that's okay. So I decided to look for alternative paths that would kind of still be around architecture that would still allow me to stay within architecture, but maybe not necessarily work directly, like, for a firm.

B So burnout, I think, is a huge conversation, but it looks different for everyone. So it would be great to understand kind of what your version of burnout looked for you when you were thinking about I need to do something different.

C I think when I'm working at a firm, it's kind of straightforward. Right? It's just, like, long hours and a little bit around, like, lack of control of your own time. That typically tends to lead to burnout for me. When I was running my own studio, it really just came from struggling to turn off, like, that just that divide between working and not working was much harder to establish, I think, especially, for any other solopreneurs out there. Like, I was just I was just doing it by myself. And when you're doing it by yourself, as, Janine probably knows and Evelyn you might know as well, it's just, like, all that I could think about was everything that I had to do. And so it was it's difficult to know, like, when you're supposed to stop at the end of the day because you know that there's 6 other projects that you have to touch on at some point that need to be that need to be done. So I just got I was just really struggling with that essentially.

A Yeah. It's really hard because, like, even when you're not working, you're thinking about all the things you need to do. Exactly.

B There's a

A lot of learning curve to becoming an entrepreneur. And it like, really, I think it, it makes you very aware of all the things that you're not so great at suddenly and quickly.

C Right. Yeah. Yeah. It puts them all into a different perspective. Like, historically, I've been very good I mean, I would say I've been very good with time management. It's not it's not something that typically I struggled with. I don't know that I struggled with, like, implementing it as much when I was running my own practice, but I didn't stop thinking about it. That was the problem.

C Like, I could step away, you know, at 5 or 6, at the end of the day. But, like, I'd still be it still was, like, stressing me out even even if I wasn't because I wasn't working on it usually. So, yeah, it's challenging.

A Yeah. So you you went through that process and kinda explore that pathway, and then you decided that you were ready to try something different. So you came across Monograph at that point?

C I actually I worked at a different start up for a few months in between that, keeping a close eye on Monograph, and then kind of jumped on Monograph once I saw them starting to grow out their sales team a bit. I reached out to them and was able to get an interview and run through the whole process.

A And what attracted you into sales?

C Yeah. That's a good question. I think it's just something like, I was I was kind of doing some self reflection to try to determine what aspects of the things I was doing that I enjoy most. And it's kind of funny, but, like like an like any other architect, right, I obviously enjoy designing more than doing, like, construction documents. I shouldn't say any other architect, but that was me in particular. I did not I did not enjoy, I did not enjoy doing construction documentation in any way, shape, or form. But I did enjoy the schematic design process. But what I enjoyed more than that was usually, like, meeting with my clients or prospective clients, trying to find new clients, developing new partnerships.

C Like, I really enjoyed that aspect of it. So that's where I kind of thought that pursuing as like a career in sales somehow around architecture could actually be, beneficial and I something that I might enjoy. So that's that's why I jumped into it. And I think as I mean, architects are kind of well positioned to be good at sales in my opinion. I don't like, whether or not you accept that architecture is a sales, like, career, it it is already. If you're if you're in it, you're you're already selling. But just in general, I mean, we're, like, brought up through kind of this whether or not we realize it, like, we're brought up kind of in this culture of almost selling our ideas on a consistent basis. Right? We're pinning up our work.

C We're talking about it. We're trying to justify the decisions that we've made to our professors or to our jury, and then we go and do the same thing usually when we go work at a at a firm. Right? We're justifying the decisions that we're making on a consistent basis. So from that alone, I think I think you're already in a good position to pursue a sales career if that's attractive to you.

A And what was it that made you interested in Monograph as a company?

C I think I mean, I still strong pretty strongly believe that, like, Monograph is probably the most exciting tech company, like, around the architecture industry at the moment. They just do amazing things, and the culture there is pretty incredible. Right? So I think what I there was there's obviously, like, what it is. Like, it's got a it's got a really fun design culture, and it has amazing people that work there. Right? So that's that's one attraction point. Another one is just the fact that it's kind of the complete opposite of what you experience or at least what I experienced in the architecture industry, as a culture. Right? Because there's a 4 day work week. There's a really good work life balance.

C There's great benefits. The pay is is better. And so it's like, it goes against everything that that was challenging about architecture, but it still allows you to come back and have a positive impact on the industry. So, you know, all that around, like, the the mission is pretty heavily weighted around positively impacting architects and the other people that contribute to the built environment. So I can get behind that mission 100%.

B So, obviously, you talked about architecture already being a part of the sales realm. But what does a what does a day in the life of really, look like if if you are carrying the title of of sales Mhmm. Kind of in your day to day?

C Yeah. There's there's typically 2 different types of sales positions at at least if you're gonna pursue, like, a tech kind of a tech role. The first one is called a sales development representative, and the second one is called, like, an account executive. You can think of sales development representatives. Those are typically, like, outbound people. Outbound meaning that they are usually doing, like, cold outreach, whether that's via email or, like, calling to try to understand if specific people would be a good fit for the product, and if they'd be interested in it. And then account executives are typically the people that meet with the people that express interest, whether that they come in through, like, one of those outbound calls or whether they come in, you know, from from wanting to book a demo on your website or something like that. That basically, like, they're kind of like, your account manager.

C Right? So they're they're guiding you through the process of trying to figure out whether or not Monograph or or any other product, right, is a right is the right fit for you, and for your firm and can help you. So, actually, you got to do both those roles. You typically start off in sales development representative, and then you move into account executive. So sales development is is kind of what it sounds like. Right? It's a lot of pretty much emailing and calling for the majority of the day trying to develop relationships with specific people. And then account executive is, just a ton of meetings. That's what it is. It's a lot of meetings, on a daily basis, but what I really enjoyed about it was just an understanding and getting a really strong pulse of the industry and the challenges that firms are facing.

C Like, I think that's the part about it that I really underestimated and that I came to love almost immediately. Whether whether it was sales development or account executive, both of those roles is just me speaking with firm leaders, and firm owners about the challenges that they're facing in their practice. And when I do that a 1000 times, I have a pretty good idea of what's going on, in the industry, which is nice.

A Yeah. That that's kind of something that you hinted at in some of your posts because you started talking about how you were speaking to all of these architects and you were getting a sense of some of the pain points that are consistent. It doesn't matter what firm you're at. That seems universal across studios. Is that true? Is that kind of where your observation was?

C Yeah. Yeah. That's true. I mean, those conversations are primary like, they're focused around specific things, but I'm not asking them, like, what is your biggest challenge in general? Like, they're focused around business challenges that they're having. But probably 95% of the the challenges that we talk about, you know, are are common, are are shared by someone else. And it's it's rare to come across one that, you know, you haven't heard before, or that's uncommon. Like, most firms are kind of experiencing the same 3 to 5 challenges across the board.

B So, of course, the follow-up question is, what are those 3 to 5 challenges?

C Yeah. I think so one one that's been really popular for for probably the last year, hearing a lot, is people not being able to find the talent that they want to bring into their firm. Right? So that's that's a really heavy one I hear from almost every single firm leader. Right? They're struggling to hire the people that they want, which I think is a little bit of a 2 sided battle. I don't think that it's the talent isn't there. I think it's that they don't wanna develop the talent probably. So right? So there's there's that. The other one is just, like, it's so rare to come across any anyone in firm ownership or firm leadership that really feels like they have a strong hold on their business.

C It's just really uncommon. And that's fair because we're not really taught how to do it. We just get thrown into it. And, usually, as you're moving up a firm, if you are working at, like, a medium or small well, actually, any size firm. I mean, if you're moving up in any way, you're not moving up necessarily because you're good at business. You're moving up because you're good at maybe managing people or because you're good at design, you're good at technical aspects. And then you all of a sudden find yourself in, like, an ownership or a partnership position meant to manage business aspects that you might have any interest in doing, right, or or maybe not even any background or skill to do it. So it's kind of like a funny it's kind of a funny system that tends to develop, like, a lot of firms that struggle to have a hold of their finances to be more proactive about how they're especially how they're, like, staffing out their team.

C That's a huge challenge. Right? Everyone's everyone's kinda struggling with, like, how in how in the world do I kind of divide and assign hours across across the team. That's a big challenge as well as just getting an understanding of, like, what is the cash flow. Like, when when is money coming in? When is it going to be going out? How can I stabilize that so that it's a little bit more reliable?

B Okay. So just backing up a little bit because you were talking about obviously pay and benefits and so many other things that make moving out of architecture and into an industry like tech and working for a company like Monograph so beneficial to to your own work life experience. You, through this process, have become a dad. So what was what was that like for you, and how has Monograph supported you through that?

C Yeah. Well, I I think, obviously, having having a 4 day work week is really beneficial. I had my son when I started working on monograph and then had my daughter after after I started working at Monograph, and so I got to take paternity leave during that period. Monograph has an amazing, paternity leave model at least at least relative to architecture firms. Right? So I got I got, 12 weeks of paid leave for paternity leave, which was amazing to be able to spend that much time with, with my family and with the kids and kind of divide and conquer. Moving from 1 to 2 is insane for anyone that's done it.

B Yes. It's not double the work. It's like No. Exponential.

C It is. Yeah. It's more like it's more like 10 times the work. It's kind of it surprised us. It surprised us. My daughter is now, like, 6 months old. Right? So we have, our son is a little over 2, and and she's 6 months. And it's been it's been different to try to adjust to having, I think, 2 kids.

C And that's with, like, our kids are, you know, honestly, they're, like, remarkable. Like, I think they've been very generous to us as parents. I mean, it's still just exhausting to be a parent no matter what.

B I would just like to as a fellow parent, I would like to who has 2 kids that are 22 months apart, which sounds kind of roughly

C where you're

B operating now.

C Same. Exactly.

B Yeah. So I was totally in the weeds until my youngest hit about 2, and then that's where they really started playing with each other. And I was at kind of we had a parent outing the other night and, you know, I was kind of reflecting on the fact that my husband and I can actually sleep in a little bit at weekends because the kids just wake up and play with one another. So that's kind of where we are, and and there's times in 7.

A So you'll get you'll get there. Okay.

C Yeah. That's exciting. Yeah. Yeah.

B Everyone always told me that I was in the weeds, and I wanted to know when I will be out of the weeds. So I'm saying around

C 2 or 3. I appreciate knowing that. Yeah.

B To experience. With the exact

C same difference. Yeah. The nice thing is that they they play well together right now, which is really nice. Like, our oldest, he's been so so understanding of, like, having it having a little sister, which has been amazing. And so he has not shown any ill will or jealousy towards her at any time, which has been amazing. Like, it's made this process so much easier. He's been very adaptable, and we're actually about to move again, like, into a a home into a different home. So we're about to test that adaptability one more time, but so far so good.

B Yeah. So, leading up to this conversation, you mentioned how kind of this transition was a bit of a thought to you to reflect on where you were at Monograph and even maybe create some change in terms of your overall trajectory there. So why don't you talk about that?

C Yeah. The the paternity was a really interesting moment to kind of reflect upon all those things you were just talking about. Like, what is my what's my role at Monograph? What do I enjoy most about what I'm doing? What's most challenging about the things that I was working on? So I spent a lot of time thinking through all of those things and kind of came back, like, from paternity leave less sure that, like, that full time sales at least was the right long term path for me. It's mainly around, like, a few things, like sales. It's kind of this like, you can you can earn, you know, a decent amount of money in sales, usually uncapped depending on where you're at, which is nice. But then what also comes to that, right, is that your your pay is directly tied to your performance, which isn't unfair. That's how it should be, but it's also stressful. Myself, even as, like, I was performing well, as a salesperson hit hitting quota, like, averaging averaging more than quota in in that role.

C Really enjoyed it, but it's still like, you know, you're restarting every month or every quarter, however long like, whenever that kind of quota repeats itself. And then you you kind of have to restart the the party. So for me, I kind of like stability, at least on the finance side. Right? So I did get to test out sales and and, like, there's so many parts about it that I loved. But with bringing in another child, having having 2 kids now and a wife to support, in supporting supporting the family, I felt like it would be better to be in a position that would provide some more financial stability there. Right? So just, like, more reliable more reliable pay that wasn't focused so much on, how much I was selling. Right? But then also allow me to use all these skills that I've developed just from being more active on LinkedIn and starting to do a lot more writing. Basically, a lot more, like, personal marketing.

C Right? A lot more personal branding. Thoroughly enjoy doing that, which is why I continue to do it on the side. So it turned out to be a need on the monograph side as well, which turned out to be which worked out well. So I was able to transition into a into a marketing role.

A So you've gone through this process of of finding where you're at in your career and and landed in this new role. What are you most excited about in taking this next step

C forward? I love learning. I think that's why, you know, that's something that I love so much about architecture too is that you can just you can never know enough. No matter where like, it's it's this funny thing where, like, we all go through, and get 1 or 2 degrees, and then we work and it's still like we we arrive at our at our job and then realize we don't know anything again, and then we kind of have to restart. There's that anxiety where you have to you feel like you have to learn how to do things differently now than you did in school. So I kind of I I love that process of knowing that there's always so much more to learn and learning how to do things differently. So I feel like I'm getting a really well rounded experience in getting some really valuable skills just from the aspect of I mean, obviously, I know how to design. I've now learned how to sell, and now I'm learning how to do more, like, professional marketing and more copywriting and more website design and more social media. So, I'm basically you know, I just I I feel like I'm getting, like, the full the full kind of surround of, a business experience, which I really appreciate.

A So you're getting that talent development support that is often lacking in the architecture firm space?

C That's exactly right.

A Sorry I might have like connected some invisible dots there but Yeah. We're gonna talk more about that in a bit. But I do wanna ask if there's anything that you do miss from being in the architecture space.

C I think it's just the people, you know. I mean, architects are so wildly talented, every single one, and they're so good at at different things. And so, again, like, being just you know, I call myself, like, a serial learner. So being, like, a serial learner, I do love that environment because there's always something there's always something to be learned from the person next to you. There's, like, the the other architect is always gonna know how to do at least one thing better than what you do. Right? And there's always, like, process to be improved in some way in in a way to, like, optimize and continue learning and growing. So I think that's what I miss most about it. It's just the people.

B But you are getting to talk to a lot of people or you at least you were in your sales role, right, in in your outreach and then as probably account executive, how does that shift then with your move to to marketing? And does this continue to meet the need of kind of that desire to continue to work with people in in the industry?

C Yeah. I think it's one of these things where I now get to take I don't know the final count now, but it's, like, over it's it's healthily over a 1000 conversations with architects and architecture leaders. So I get to take all of that that I've learned and make sure that that, monograph is speaking well and presenting itself well to those to those people, like, based on those conversations and the challenges and pain points that I know that they have. So it's different, but it's not like I'm not talking to people. I'm just not having as many conversations with architecture leaders. But I still you know, even in this role, I have to communicate with, like, our existing customers and understand where their values lie and also continue to listen to other conversations and have conversations with our sales team and with our customer experience team and with our product team and to understand what challenges they're facing and what things they're hearing and how to best, basically, how to best serve our customers is essentially what it is.

B So as a part of that, your that transition, you kind of alluded to writing and doing more on LinkedIn. So I wanna kind of dive into that and this entire tactics. So why don't you talk a little bit about why at the beginning of the year or when you went on paternity leave did you decide to do this in the first place?

C Yeah.

B And and lessons learned from from doing that?

C Yeah. I've been posting regularly on LinkedIn since January of last year. Right? So since January of 22. I originally just started by by just kind of posting my own observations of the industry as well as challenges that I had faced. Relatively quickly realized that I was definitely not alone in those thoughts or challenges. Like Janine said. Right? I had a lot of people that reached out to me initially, which was really encouraging. I mean, I've continued to do that, and I think now it's, like, helped a lot of other people also realize, like, they're not alone.

C Right? This is a shared interest. This is a shared passion among people. This is something that the industry, like, recognizes needs to change, which is really good. So, yeah, when I went on paternity leave, I don't know why I decided to do it, like, so so soon. I think my daughter was, like, 2 or 3 weeks old. I don't know I don't know what goes through your mind. You know, your new your child number 2 comes around. You have paternity leave.

C There's, like, no extra time, and I just decided why not start a newsletter. But the the real impetus was it was just because I knew that there was a need for it just from posting more often about things that I had learned on the business development side, like, in sales. It didn't take me it didn't take me too long to be in a formal sales role to realize how terrible I was at it, like, before, you know, when I was running my own practice, that I didn't have any systems in place, that I didn't know how to guide a conversation or how to ask the right questions. So that became pretty clear to me that I didn't know what I was doing. So then I started talking to some of my other friends. Right? Because architects are only friends with other architects. So I was talking to my other, architecture friends, asking them, you know, especially as, like, they were all kind of also starting to, like, start their own practices and do their own at least, you know, do side projects, things like that, asking them what their experience with that was, realizing that they also had the same experience. Like, they didn't really know what they were doing.

C So that was that was really the impetus to just, like, I know that there's a need for it in the industry to talk more about, like, these business development aspects, to talk more about how you can guide conversations and how you can have better conversations and ask better questions so that you can get better clients and specifically how so that you can increase your own value just by understanding what the client values more.

A Do you remember any of your early posts? I'm just wondering, like, off the top of your mind if, like, you could give our listeners an example of something that you might have posted early on.

C Usually, just things around, like, architects work long hours and they have low pay. Right? They experience burnout often, yet they're incredibly talented and extremely valuable and and, yeah, just skilled in so many different ways. So it's just it's like a weird it's a weird situation that we find ourselves in in the industry where the architect seems so undervalued and the profession seems so undervalued just given the amount of skill. Like, I just I truly do believe that architects, especially, like, just in their training, like, there's almost nothing that they can't probably jump into and offer value in in some way. Like, we're just taught to creatively solve problems all the time, which is such a valuable skill. So the fact that we can do that for other industries and other things so easily, but then we struggle to do it within our own industry is is it's it's odd.

A It is odd.

B It's odd

C that we find ourselves in this position.

A Yeah. And people that's a really good point. You know, I I've definitely seen architects they will fight for their clients they will give them go above and beyond and then when they like simultaneously neglect their own needs. And you know what was amazing I feel like early on you came out swinging with some of these messages that really caught the attention, of many people on LinkedIn in this industry and I know you've refined your message over time and and we're gonna talk about Tyler tactics which we recommend everybody to sign up for but early on in this process when you started putting that message out there Was there ever any hesitation when you got started, like, that you were dipping into an area that might trigger some people?

C Yeah. I mean, it did. It did and it still does. It did and it still does. Yeah. There's there's a little bit of hesitation, but I think this is one of those things that come with, 1, I know that I know that Monograph, like, is supportive of changes in the industry, right, of of, like, wanting to decrease burnout, right, and wanting to increase pay and wanting to improve business practices. The second one was that I know that I'm not working directly for a firm. Right? I'm not working for a firm.

C So I don't I don't have to worry about an architecture firm getting upset with me because I'm saying that they're not paying their employees enough. So it's like this it was kind of this, like, healthy spot to find myself in where I'm still kind of tangential to the industry and still working directly with architects, but don't have to worry about blowback from being, like, directly in the industry. So, yeah, there was definitely some hesitation initially, I remember. But after, you know, after a few posts and realizing, like, this is, like, this is obviously this obviously means something, and there's definitely something here. That's kind of, like, what kept it going. Right? I mean, it's the it's the people. It's it's the people that kept it going. That's what that was the most encouraging part to see these responses to understand, like, okay.

C Yeah. I wasn't alone in my experience. They're not alone in their experience, and now other people are realizing that, like, yeah, this is a shared this is a shared observation, and this is a shared challenge that we should all get behind in some way.

A I remember when I worked in practice raising some of these concerns at various points and getting some really harsh feedback for raising observations. One job in particular but that's another story for another day And it made me nervous when I went out on my own and had this idea of wanting to build this business around similar hopes and dreams of changing the industry. And then also Evelyn and I, as we develop the podcast, same thing. I would go through it with her. I'd be like, oh my gosh, can we save this? Are we gonna get criticized and, you know, what blowback are we gonna experience? But honestly, you're right. Like, being outside of being employed by a firm, I feel like I have more people listening to me than I did when I was inside a firm. It's like a strange dynamic that actually gives you more ability and space to say what's on your mind. And then the thing that really makes a difference for me is when I have women who come up to me and are so appreciative that we've said something that they thought, but they never felt like they could say.

A And that's happened behind closed doors so many times that I know that it matters, that I come out swinging and say things sometimes.

C Yeah. That's awesome. I I do love getting messages from people, like saying thank you for just thank you for saying anything about this. Like, this is, like, you know, this is something that I've I've been in the industry. Like, I've gotten messages just from people. Like, I've been I've been working in the industry for 15 or 20 years, and I, like, average 60 hours a week. And I've been doing it for so long, and I'm exhausted. And it's sad.

C It's a sad it's a sad thing that just shouldn't exist. But, yeah, it really does come around. I wouldn't still be doing it if it wasn't for, like, you know, the community, like, the architecture community in general and what they and then what they push for. I mean, it's a passionate it's a passionate community that's passionate about bringing positive change, I think.

B And at its core, I think that's why I stay so well, I mean, it is you talked about the people in architecture, and that's kind of why you've still stayed adjacent to the industry. And I, and I feel like that's what continues to drive me too, to stay adjacent to the industry because there are these very passionate people. We know that they can run their businesses better than they are. Yeah. So how do we how do we They know that. How do we get they they know that. Yeah. So how do we help them make that connection and do things do things differently? So in addition to just getting the feedback that you have been getting, one, why don't you tell us a little bit about because we keep saying Tyler tactics, but but why don't we actually you tell us a little bit about about the newsletter itself and and Tyler tactics and and some of the consulting endeavors that have kind of rolled off of that.

B Be a little bit more specific about the value that you are are actually bringing to the conversation?

C Yeah. Sure. So Tyler tactics currently is just a weekly newsletter. I put it out every Sunday morning. I've been doing it since September, so it's now been about 6 months. And I'm coming up on I'm coming up on 1200 subscribers, which is really exciting. I call them ambitious architects. I'm coming up on 1200 ambitious architects that are following along every week.

C Really thankful for all of them. They're all very engaged. Typical things that I'll talk about, I I spend a lot of time talking about how to have better conversations and specifically ask better questions. That's probably been, like, I don't know, 60 to 70% of those, like, weekly tactics that I do are usually focused around, like, how to say something in a different way or how to ask a question differently and how to dive a little bit deeper into the needs of your customer or the needs of your client, I should say. So things like that. I talk about, like, how to manage your pipeline, the one that's going out this weekend, which won't be out or which will definitely be out by the time this this airs in any capacity is talking about, you know, how to say no to your client without actually saying the word no. Different ways that you can go about, like, having those conversations. So, really, what it came out of was, you know, being in that sales role and just understanding the impact of the way that you say things, the way that things are framed, the different questions you can ask, and having having so many different kind of, like, approaches to those conversations really gave me just a just a wild, like, understanding of the impact that those things have.

C Like, they can really change a conversation, and they can really help you understand what your client values the most and what it is that they're actually, like, that they're actually trying to solve. Because especially when we're talking about architecture and when we're talking about architects and their clients, clients don't just, like, wake up one day and decide that they wanna spend 100 of 1,000 of dollars or 1,000,000 of dollars, right, on a new project. There's something there. There's like a there's a frustration. There's a challenge. There's a pain that's led to that decision. And, usually, we don't actually you know, you can't discover it by asking those quantitative questions around, like, how many units do you want? What's the square footage? Like, you're not you're not gonna find it. So it's much better to focus on, like, actually forming meaningful connections and meaningful relationships, getting that conversation to a deeper point so that you can actually understand the value, the challenge, the pain.

C And 1, establish if you are the right fit for that. And 2, if you are, you know, position yourself as the vehicle to get them from where they are to where they want to be.

A I wanted to ask you about your process, if you don't mind sharing a little bit about how you've elevated your craft in this space.

C Yeah. It's been through a big focus on writing. I've always enjoyed writing. I didn't know about copywriting. I didn't know what copywriting was until, like, a year and a half ago. Right? And for those of you that don't know, copywriting is essentially just like, how would you even describe it? I don't know if I can say it shortly, but it's it's, you know, writing that encourages your reader to keep on reading is how I would describe it. Right? It's kind of like it's it's writing for marketing. It's writing for sales.

C It's writing for attention. It's kind of like all of those things combined. It's writing to get your message read. That's that's what copywriting is. And so I dove into that a lot just trying to find, you know, almost following attention. Right? You can you can look on you know, people write differently on Twitter than they do on LinkedIn, than they do in newsletters, than they do in articles. Right? There's kind of different forms of writing that people find themselves attracted to. So I was following attention in the sense that I was looking at other people that were getting attention, understanding how they were writing, how they were formatting things, right, and how they were framing things.

C And then kind of, like, usually taking that back and framing it some way, like, in an architectural capacity. Right? Because there's just not that many. No. We're we're part of a small we're part of a small community here of of, like, creators in architecture that that write about these challenges on a consistent basis. So I've always found value from looking outside of the industry and then coming in. And so from doing that, like, there's, you know, obviously learning different formats, different words, and things that you can use to get a little bit more attention on your post or to keep people reading. What's also coming out of that is, like, different frameworks around doing writing that kind of hold people's attention. So one that I use almost every single week in my newsletter, for anyone for anyone that's in my newsletter or follows is called, PAS.

C It's, it's called, like, PAS, is a form of copywriting where you start off by explaining what the problem is. You agitate that problem, right, by, like, giving specific examples or talking about, like, a specific experience that you've had or that someone has had, and then you present the solution to that. I've actually broken down. I have, like, a, you know, a notion document where I break down all the topics that I wanna talk about in my newsletter, and I break it down into those things. I actually add another s, for steps, like, just to actually, like, do the solution because that's a big thing for me in newsletters and something that frustrate that's frustrated me and that I've tried to fix in in Tyler tactics is that there's a lot of newsletters that just, like, present the problem and present the solution, but then don't actually tell you how to do it. Like, they don't give you the actionable steps. So it's really important to me to make sure that whenever I do a newsletter, 1, I keep it short. It's always under a 5 minute read.

C But 2, that I actually provide actionable steps that if you were to go out, and have a conversation with a client on Monday, you'd have you'd know how to do it. You'd know how to do it differently.

B What's interesting to me is, like, you took this very analytical approach even I think to learning how to post better on LinkedIn, which I feel like most people wouldn't even think about researching, like how I can make more meaningful posts on LinkedIn and, and where to follow that. So I feel like everything is an educational opportunity and, you know, I'm scrolling through LinkedIn right now. And all I see is architects posting pretty pictures of their projects, like their final products. And I was like, there's so much more that you can talk about.

C Yeah. Yeah. We tend to post things that will attract other architects and not necessarily attract other clients. That's that's the true downfall. It's like

B thing we do.

C It's a big thing we do. It's a big thing that websites do. Right? Like, is your website actually for to help you attract other clients, or is it to help you impress other architects? Right?

B And then speaking even of your pipeline, like, is it talking at all about your firm culture to attract the right talent?

C Exactly. Exactly.

A I did wanna come back to that because we kind of teased that up in the beginning of the conversation on talent development. So can you share some Tyler tactics with our audience about talent development?

C Around talent development? I don't know if I've had a Tyler tactic around talent development. I've had a I've definitely written a couple of posts about it. Like, my my personal perspective on this is that talent development requires a few things. One of them being transparency. Like, you it's the it's such a free it's literally a free way to develop talent by being transparent about finances at your firm, about processes, about how decisions are made at your firm. If you do that and if you're transparent about it, then just via osmosis, the people that are actually that that actually, like, care about that, the talent that actually cares about that is going to understand and learn how those decisions are made or how these processes work. And they're probably even going to start thinking about different ways of improving those processes and things like that. So to me, that's like, I understand it as, like, being a difficult, like, mental model to get over.

C Right? Like, should I share this information? Should people see that? Like, I understand I understand the hesitancy there, but I think the benefits far outweigh that just because, you know, there's other options too. Right? I mean, you should have you can have, like, a mentorship model. You can have different trainings that you're doing doing in place. And I think that you should do those, but those all require much more work than just being transparent. Like, if you're just transparent, that's free, it's easy, and it almost requires, like, no extra work. It almost requires no extra work, and people will just begin to develop from that.

B What's interesting to me though is the disconnect between how trans like, how communicative and how transparent leaders believe they are being versus what kind of the middle managers and the individual contributors, the people working, doing the work, like what they actually need from them.

C So So

B I think that's that becomes, like, your your 3rd us in terms of, like, very specifically. Like, what are the things that they can be more transparent about that that really support growth growth and development? Because it's not just enough to say, you know, we hit our goal by a 100% or we exceeded our profit goal by a 150%. Right. Right.

C Yeah. I mean, I would say, I think that, if we're talking specifically about architecture and architecture firms, I think that project managers need to know the actual dollar amount budget that they have to work with. I don't know how you manage a project effectively without knowing that so that you can kind of move that money around as needed and make more informed decisions. Right? And I think, you know, honestly, I I do think that there would be some value even if, like, designers were aware of that. If they understood, like, their time was directly you know, you you just don't think about that. You don't think about that when you're in a design role that, like, your money is somehow it, like, has a greater meaning. Like, you don't you're just not usually told, like, the the impacts of spending an extra hour on something, right, when you might not need to. Like, we're not we're not driven into this idea of kind of, like, working efficiently necessarily.

C Yeah. Yeah. So we leave hours on the table all of the time, especially as a as a designer. Because what you're trying to do is you're trying to improve the design, but you don't realize that you're probably spending, like, 3 or 4 more hours on it than you actually need to.

B And then all those changes that you need to you make that you have to re coordinate with, like, any consultants depending on where you are in the process.

C Yeah.

B So what took you 5 minutes might take a lot longer.

C Yeah. It has, like, it has effects down the line. That's right. Right? So you can make one change to the design because you wanna improve it, and then the consultants all have to make changes to their drawings as well. And then the client has to be re like, reinformed in some way that there's a change happening and then, you know, so it it happens down the line, but we don't we generally don't, like, think about those we're we're not at least I wasn't. Right? You know? I'm not like, I wasn't taught at the beginning, like, in a designer role, like, oh my gosh. If I make this one change, then there's, like, this chain reaction that happens after that.

A Yeah. And architects are notoriously not loving filling out time sheets, but I think Monograph has done a really great job educating the industry around why that's important. And you guys have actually I I told Robert this when I saw him in Austin, but I just feel like you guys have developed such great content around educating the market on business. Just really basic fundamental ideas, why a time sheet matters, why is it important to track your time.

C Yeah. Yeah. And I think that was that was another attraction to Monograph. Right? It's that they they are they care enough, not just like it's not just about getting more people into Monograph because we certainly, like, you know, the market the market of firms is huge, and we only work with a, you know, specific sector of of architects right now. However, a lot of the content is really valuable to almost any architect. Right? And just talking about things that not even, like, not even challenges necessarily that that Monograph solves. Right? Different things that you can do to improve your business. But it's also, like, I can tell you right now that it's like an endless discovery process within Monograph as well.

C Like, we're having we just started doing these things that we're calling office hours, which are not recorded sessions, where, like, 50 to 100 architects typically jump into, like, a Zoom call, and we literally talk about a specific topic. Because we're trying to understand too, like, what what actually are these best practices? Like, what are people actually doing that are doing it well so that we can, you know, share and collaborate with that information better to, like, you know, to raise up the entire industry.

B Yeah. But what I love about Monograph is not only do you talk, and this is not a sponsored a sponsored episode by any means. We just love the product, and we love the people. And I think we and we love the the culture and but they've built in all the tools into the platform. So not only do they talk about transparency, but then they enable you to show the financials down to the person doing the bathroom details, should you want to. So that they can so that you can begin to have those critical conversations about what changing details does to the rest of the project.

C Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. Different permission levels so that people can see the information that you want them to see.

B So now that we've, like, kind of looped back to Monograph, I guess, you know, my question for you is, obviously, they have the 4 day work week. Usually, they encourage this type of work. So, and you've talked about how supportive they've been, just generally professional development and movement and career growth for you. By enabling you to do this, what has been the benefits to to monograph from

C Yeah.

B From you going through that process?

C I mean, I think it's a it's mutually beneficial. Right? So we didn't even talk about this, but the whole reason one of the reasons that I felt empowered to post on LinkedIn to begin with was because they had paid for a course for me to take that was, like, around LinkedIn content creation, essentially. Right? So I took that course and, like, immediately began implementing it. Right? So that was that was the thing that empowered me to to begin posting on LinkedIn. Right? Obviously, as I grow my audience, it's, like, it's heavily it's heavily architecture focused and even start Tyler tactics where, you know, people jump on to a newsletter and know that I work at Monograph. People jump on to my profile. The 15,000 followers jump on to my profile and know that I work at Monograph. Right? It's it's a mutually beneficial relationship.

C The growth of my own personal brand obviously reflects, hopefully, positively on on Monograph. Right? And just in terms of being a voice and hopefully some kind of, like, thought leader in the industry, right, that Monograph can look at and say, yeah. He he works here as well among with, like, so many so many other talented and passionate people here that are really focused on, you know, this mission of improving, the way that the people that control our built environment run their business.

B Yeah. And this is a small group. I think we we just have have architect creators, and I've taken inspiration from you, Tyler. And this year in 2023, I've kind of made an effort to begin to be post more regularly to to LinkedIn.

C Yeah.

B So That's awesome. For anyone else who is interested in getting onto the form, kind of what recommendations do you have for them, and and why did you ultimately choose LinkedIn over the Instagrams, TikToks, and Twitters of the world?

C That's a good question. Yeah. I'll answer I'll answer that one first. The reason I chose LinkedIn is because I'm not a social it's kinda funny. I'm not like a social media fan. I'm not a huge fan of it. I haven't been on Facebook in, like, 5 years. I post on Instagram, like, twice a year.

C Like, I basically you know, I never I never post on Instagram. Twitter just seems like it's so hard to like, I I just don't have enough thoughts in the day to post regularly on Twitter and for the people that do that. So what I appreciate about LinkedIn is that it's more of a professional setting. Right? So people aren't jumping on to see, like, what I'm having for lunch or what's happening in my life necessarily. They're looking for information to, become better in their profession. Right? They wanna become better in their business or better in their profession. They wanna improve or upscale in some way. Like, that's generally, I think that's the benefit of posting on LinkedIn because that's why people are there.

C They're there to network. Right? They're there to communicate with other professionals in some way, and to continue improving. So that's I think I think that's a huge benefit of LinkedIn, like, over others. It's just not as I don't know. Like, I don't it's just not as, like, muddy. Probably the way to say it. Right? It's it's a little bit cleaner, which I really appreciated. So that's what made it easier for me, and that's why I ultimately landed on LinkedIn.

C It's kind of like an untapped resource for anyone. It's a great starting point for that reason because the barrier of entry is super low. So that's what's good about it. Yeah. So it's a low barrier of entry. Like, I mean, I, you know, I started with less than a 1000 followers a little over a year ago, and I'm up to 15,000. So it's not you know, it's plenty possible to to grow in a short period of time on the platform. If you're looking to do it, I think there's 3 things you can do.

C The first one is to find creators that you appreciate and that happen to capture your attention on a regular basis. The second thing would then be to obviously, like, to kind of study them to get a sense for how they're formatting things, why people are attracted to them, why you're attracted to them, and and to the content that they're posting. Like, why is it helpful? How is it helpful? And usually do that. Like, I would do that through, like, a copywriting framework. I you know, Google copywriting. There's a ton of newsletters around it. There's a ton of people that tweet about it. There's a ton of people on LinkedIn that post about it.

C Just having even a base level understanding of copywriting can make a huge impact, I think, on on the reach that you get on your posts. And then the third thing is just to start posting. And that's the thing that most people don't do. Right? You hesitate because you're afraid of how people are going to respond. It's okay. I have I have posts that get, like, 5 likes. It's you know, I have 15,000 followers and still have posts that get, like, absolutely nothing. Right? So it happens and and the but the difference is that I've now posted, like, 500 times.

C Right? So I know that if one doesn't work, then there's another one that might be more beneficial and more helpful for people. But you have to start to get there, and you have to be able to kind of, like, look back and understand what's working and what's not working and what people care about and what they don't care.

A Hi, disruptors. If you like the content from today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practiceofarchitecture.com/podcast.

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