Reclaiming Value: Transforming the Business of Architecture with Tyler Suomala

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast exploring how architects can build better businesses, embrace emerging technology, and create more sustainable, fulfilling practices. I'm your host, Evelyn Lee, architect, angel investor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're running a firm, starting your career, or reimagining what's possible, this podcast challenges you to think differently about the future of architecture. This episode is brought to you by Gelt. Firm owners, are you overpaying on taxes? I use Gelt for my business and saved over $10,000 in year one. Visit joingelt.com and mention Practice of Architecture for 10% off your first year. Hello, disruptors. Welcome to the season 12 premiere.

A Of Practice Disrupted. I'm so happy to be back in this chair after what might have been a crazy but fulfilling year. For those of you who don't know, I just wrapped serving as the 2025 AIA president. For this season opener, I've invited one of our podcast friends to join me. Tyler Sumala from Growth Attack is here to flip the script and interview me. Tyler and I have been part of a little creators group together, and we've supported each other's work for a while now.

B So when I asked him to help me kick off this season with a.

A Conversation instead of a traditional interview, he jumped right in. We talk about what I learned from.

B A year of conversations with architects across.

A The country and the globe, the uncomfortable.

B Gap between what architects complain about and.

A What we're actually willing to do about it, and why so many of us have become paralyzed by problems we don't even have yet. We also dig into the business model question that I can't seem to stop thinking about. The strategic planning work most firms avoid, and what it would actually take to make architecture competitive with tech when it comes to attracting and retaining talent. Along the way, Tyler challenges me by asking for a magic wand answer. We talk about the value of AIA membership that most members don't fully understand, and we land on a piece of advice from my husband that's shaped how I think about risk and decision-making.. It's a conversation about taking control, building the business and life you actually want, and remembering that you really don't have a decision to make until you have.

B A decision to make. Hi Tyler, welcome to Practice Disrupted. It's so great to have you here.

C Evelyn, thank you so much for having me. I was really excited and also super confused, by the way, when you sent me the message. You were like, do you want to interview me on my podcast for the first episode of of the season. I love the concept. I mean, we know each other pretty well, so like, you know, I just had to be like, is that— did you mean to ask me that the way that you said it? But I am so excited to jump in because you just got off, I'm sure, which was one of, you know, the wildest years of your life. Congrats on wrapping up your AIA presidency and officially handing off the torch.

B My family is happy to have me home. You and I were talking about this. I don't know if we actually got in a meeting the last quarter of the year because we have our little creators meeting Oh, right.

C Yeah, I don't think we did.

B I don't think we did.

A It's, uh, I wanna say September to.

B December I was home that whole stretch. I was home for a full week. Halloween week I insisted on being home cuz I have two littles and the school never tells you what's going to happen until the week of. So needed to be around for all the Halloween festivities. And then Thanksgiving week I was home that entire week. But every other week was chopped up with travel somewhere outside of that from September to the first week of December. And then I disappeared off the face of the earth for like a month before I decided to come back.

C And you've emerged, you've emerged, you're here. Well, we are so happy to have you back. I mean, I think we collectively, but I think also having, having your full attention, you know, back onto practice of architecture, back on practice disrupted. I think all of your fans, myself included, are excited to have you back here.

B Well, that's good. I mean, the podcast kept going. The social media around the podcast was a lot harder to pick up. So, I mean, and we can talk about the operations I need to manage that one, which I'm going to hopefully automate.

C Yeah. Well, let me know if you figure that out because I haven't figured it out on my end totally yet either.

B It's, uh, yeah, it's, well, Claude and I are working through something right now. I'm pretty excited about it.

C Claude's a good guy. He's good at helping. Things like that. Getting better. Well, I'm curious. So all of that traveling, right? All of that traveling, so many conversations, I'm sure, with architects around the country. You know, what was like one of the primary takeaways for you from the year of, you know, chatting with architects?

B What's really interesting is I don't think that most of our members fully understand the value of the AIA membership. And I think I've gotten a lot of the value of the membership out of being involved in leadership, right? And the opportunity it does, it gives me to make connections and then to travel. Well, last year doing a lot of travel, but even in the interim, like being able to go to conference every year is, you know, being a part of leadership and seeing friends there. What I didn't fully feel or understand until I was president, and I've been on the board a very long time, is how incredibly knowledgeable our advocacy team is at the national level and what they're doing to advocate on behalf of not only our members but the profession at large. So much so that you can say like any non-AIA member is freeloading off of the member dues that we're paying for the, to the advocacy team and what they're doing. And been a, it's it was a really tough year from an advocacy standpoint. We're paying a lot of defense on the federal level and, and offense on the local level and supporting local components the best we could. But it was just interesting that all of the things we do on the advocacy level isn't necessarily seen at the local level, especially on the national level.

B And when you start to talk about the things that we're doing to protect licensure, to ensure that architects have a voice and a seat at the table to look at different government contracts and how our fees fit into that, then they're like, oh, like you guys are actually doing some work that only an organization of this size can do at that level.

C That's really interesting. Yeah, because I think, well, I'm sure you obviously are right that a lot of people don't know what's happening behind the scenes because it's really, I think it's easy to fall behind this idea of like, hey, we're advocating for the profession, but It's like none of us are, I mean, with the exception of you and the leadership team, like none of us are really seeing how the sausage is made. We're just experiencing the realities of it basically.

B But it's also interesting to me because architects complain so much about things that require political movement and there's an organization that's actually trying to do something about it, but then architects complain about that organization.

C Well, you know what's funny? I was on a call with with a, an architect today that just had endless, endless complaints and excuses, literally just about everything, you know, in the industry, like nothing could be going right. It's funny, I don't often talk to my clients like that, by the way. I don't think that's the default. I don't think that's the default, but it was just like such a perfect representation of what can be wrong with these different things because at the end of the day, I mean, you know, AI, no matter what, it's going to be moving slowly because there's so many parts. There's so many components to it. Like you can't make a quick move on anything because of how many things are involved. The quickest move any architect can make is just to do something themselves rather than waiting for some kind of national—.

B Which is always my question, right? You know, well then what are you going to do about it?

C Yeah.

B Which is, and I think for both of us maybe, but that's one of the most frustrating things for me about how critical we are of everything going off and going on around us, but our lack of critical thinking applied to what can we actually affect and change and let's do something about it.

C Yeah. What's the first thing to do in your mind?

B Well, no, well, you know me, my whole thing is it's all around the business model.

C Yeah. Is there a different business model? Yeah.

B Which is a really hard thing for architects to wrap their head around. So I'm trying to figure out like, what are the incremental steps that you can take rather than just, you know, changing your entire business model. But, but for me, until we figure out a model where we're not running on such slim margins, then we are a profession or an industry or in, in a bit of a crisis, right?

C Yeah, well, I feel like this relates back to, I mean, you know, we both started in architecture, we both stepped away to a certain extent, like we've stayed, you know, in and around or tangential to architecture in many ways. But I'm curious for you, like what that distance has given you because it's obviously informed a lot of your opinion on like what things can be better and what things we can be doing differently.

B Oh, that's such a tough question. It's a good question. When you were saying that too, I also realized I've never asked you why you stayed. In architecture, so we'll have to like kind of circle around back to that.

C Sure. Yeah.

B I think we consider ourselves too special, right? Which hinders us from getting help from the outside a lot. I don't know how many architects I've talked to, especially when you get into like small firm forums that say we paid money for a social media person or we paid money for a business development person and they didn't understand our narrative and our story and what So we let them go. But I still think even if you let them go, it's just like, well, what lessons did you learn from them? Because you did bring this expertise into your space. But we're professional services in a broader category, and we're not necessarily that, that special. The other thing is just thinking that we own design thinking when we don't actually, as architects, do a lot of design thinking. I'm sure I'm gonna get a lot of flack for that. That's like a whole nother podcast or LinkedIn post. But thinking that we own this space, like design thinking is a methodology and a process, and architects always want to start from scratch and rebuild from scratch.

B So it's just kind of funny, like how much we rely on creativity and newness to get things done, which creates this inability really to scale anything that we do in a profitable way.

C Interesting. Yeah. So it's almost like you think you could see how the creativity The natural creativity that most architects have is kind of getting in the way of more systematic approaches.

B Well, because we always want to build from scratch, but the truth is we're never truly building from scratch, right?

C Yeah. I mean, we shouldn't be reinventing the.

B Wheel each time, but we want to. We should be borrowing from every single client.

C Yeah. I mean, that's, I mean, from, from getting a little bit of distance from architecture, I realized, oh my gosh, other industries have a lot better systems in place. Than we— especially when it comes to business models, for sure when it comes to business models, you know. And so what can we— I mean, that's, you know, heck, that's all of what Growth Detect is, is I'm translating, I'm translating things that I've learned outside of the industry like back into the industry different ways, you know, still trying, trying to-ish fit it within the traditional model while also pushing on it. But like, you know, there's, there's so much to be learned from, from just looking a little bit outside and opening up to the idea that We're not the only professional service, you know, that's available. You know, we're not the only people that have tight markets or that are competing, that have, you know, that have services that are competing on price and all these things. Like it's not, it's not that uncommon really.

B So back to the question that I wanted to ask you then, like why, why stay in this vertical?

C I mean, for me, that was like 5 years ago now. 4 or 5 years ago now that I, I think I like, you know, dissolved my studio and then, and then jumped.

B Yeah, but you could take this marketing stuff and go elsewhere, probably get paid more.

C You could now, but like I didn't have it at the time. That was the thing, like I had stepped away, I dissolved it because I didn't have the sales and marketing skills that I felt like I needed to be the best business owner that I could. And so my thought was, you know, I there's always gaps. Like, I don't have a problem taking a risk and starting a business sooner than what I think I was ready for. And that's what I did, basically. Like, I started my, you know, architecture design studio, like, probably sooner than I should have. But I very quickly realized what I don't know, right? And so then my option was, okay, well, do I keep sludging through things that I don't know, or should I just kind of, like, go, go learn the things in the best, in the fastest and best way possible? And then take those things that I learned and kind of, you know, fill fill in, in the gaps that I am experiencing now. And so I chose, you know, I chose the latter.

C So I chose to just go all in and go work for other companies. And in my mind, I was just thinking, you know, I do still— I still love architecture, and it's still where most of my knowledge and experience lies. So if I can find a job that still benefits architecture in some way, right, but I but I actually get to learn and develop the skills that I don't have right now around sales and marketing, then that would be super beneficial for me in whatever it is that I do choose to do, you know, moving forward. And so that's, that's how I thought about it because yeah, 4, I mean, 4 or 5 years ago I didn't have, I mean, I think a little bit innately maybe do I have some of those, some of those, you know, skills maybe, but I still didn't have the systems or the approaches or really the knowledge on how to execute it. Properly. And so that's what I learned.

B Okay, then why do you stay?

C And now I stay just because I've, you know, because I've already built it in there. It's almost like you stay because you started here, which is a little bit of a lame answer, but like I, I do, I've consistently learned the benefits, especially I think even more so over the last 5 years, I've consistently learned the benefits of like compound effects. Right, of compounding. And so giving something time to develop and to grow and to expand is so important because I think so often— and this is true of firm owners for sure as well— like, we give up too early, you know. Our creativity, to your point, gets in the way and we get shiny object syndrome, and then we go and try something else without having given, you know, without having given proper opportunity to the thing that we were actually focused on. And so Growth Detect now is awesome. I love it. It's fully supporting myself.

C It's fully supporting my family. I love every second that I get to spend on Growth Detect, but it took 3 years. Actually, I was just talking about this with my wife. We were kind of thinking about it. I had almost forgotten. For 3 years, I was working a full-time job. And then basically from 8:00 PM to 2:00 AM in the morning, I was working on building this. And that was a lot of work.

C But I kept pushing through it because, you know, I believe that there is something that consistent effort will eventually, you know, provide consistent results. But you have to have that trust in what you're doing, I think.

B I will have to admit, so I'm interested in technology and the tech, like the implications of technology and transformation on the industry. But I will have to admit, like the courses that I've been thinking about building out this year, I'm like, this is a course that anyone in any industry could leverage.

C Yes. I see. That's why your question is, you're like, why, why stay in architecture?

B So why stay?

A Yeah.

C Yeah. I think, well, what's your answer to that? Especially you. I mean, I'll give you mine, but I just gave, I just gave you mine.

B You want mine?

C Yours. Yeah. Like, why do you want to stay in architecture?

B Well, so, so there's an interesting thing. So I had this opportunity that I signed an NDA, but I got reached out to from an executive search firm. Long story short, it didn't work out, which is fine, I think, and all for the best because I think it would have been a struggle for both parties if it, if it had, and not in the best way. But it made me consider what it is I'm trying to do within the architecture industry. And so much of what practice of architecture has been up to this point has been about injecting innovation. And through a little bit of self-soul searching, I was like, it's not so much innovation that I want to see happen in the industry, it's foundational transformation. That if we don't transform the practice, and there's this whole paper that a friend of mine out of the University of Michigan just launched too. He has this notion of the 4 quadrants of the transformation in the industry.

B And then the upper one is the reject button where people coming out of school are going to be creating their own businesses and architects essentially are going to be working for them rather than having architecture firms. And I feel like that could potentially be a reality if we don't change the way we practice. So, I stay because I love the people even though they drive me nutty, but I really want to see the profession and the industry thrive. In a new way, but I could be making more money teaching AI transformation to other organizations.

C Oh, for sure. Yeah.

B Yeah.

C I mean, you can still, you can still build that on the side if you want. If you want now, you know, there's no, no one, no one slowing you down. My answer is similar. I have a selfless and a selfish answer. Okay. I have like two answers to that, right? The selfless answer is very similar to what you said, like, Architecture feels home to me. I love the industry as a whole. I love the people in it.

C And I think there's massive room for improvement and massive, like, thirst for it. Like, you know, despite what you said, like, some of them drive you nutty. Yeah, I think that's true. But like, when you really dive into it, like, everyone wants that change. And so there's a hunger for it. And I think that's really attractive to me because on the selfish side, like, I am a very obsessive and like competitive person and not necessarily competitive with like other people, but I'm so competitive just with myself. Right. And so it's like I've started here and I am at this point just obsessed with whatever I can possibly do to like impact as many architects and architecture firm owners to, you know, get them through that transformation and help them understand like it doesn't have to be feast or famine.

C And there are better ways of running your business and it doesn't have to be wildly complicated. And so it's just like, yeah, it's probably, I probably have some kind of issue with myself, but it's like, I can't let go of it. Like I just, I just need to see it all the way through. So Evelyn, so you've literally gotten the, arguably the top spot probably, you know, you spent, you just spent a year at the top spot in terms of understanding what is happening in the industry. I mean, I'm sure you got a front row seat into literally all of the things that are wrong and can go wrong and all of that. And so like, what is the single biggest problem?

B Here's the frustration though. So when I left the board, I think I'm the only human being to have served on this board at the national capacity in various different positions throughout my life for now 10 years. And the struggles have not evolved and changed that much. The political climate that we are operating in, the rules, the regulations, those have changed, made things harder. You can say in other instances, maybe made them easier. But the basic struggles that all architects have, like, have not changed. And I think it's just because we've not done a lot to change ourselves, honestly. But the other thing is like, it's funny because I live in like, I am admittedly like this AIA geek, right? I geek out on AIA.

B I asked my husband if we could go to Hawaii. We're going to Hawaii for spring break. And he's like, why this year? And I was like, because my AIA friends are going to Hawaii. Because there's about like 4 or 5 of us that have decided that there are spring breaks, our kids' spring breaks align. We're like, let's do this trip. Jason's been wanting us to go to Hawaii. Let's all go to Hawaii. And he's like, your AIA friend.

B He's like, so we're gonna go like on spring break to hang out with the AIA. And I was like, we're just gonna go on spring break to hang out with my friends. Is that like a better way?

C Reframing. Yes.

B Is that a better way to say it? But it's, it's just such, it's such a weird position to be in because The, the presidents, the local presidents and the local case execs, the executive leaders are so incredibly grateful that you are there as a national president. But I would say 99% of the members don't even know who the national president is or who's on the national board. So it's funny to hear you say like, that's the top dog position, but it's only the top dog position because I'm introduced that way. By the local president, but if I just like snuck in the back door, nobody would know.

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C Yeah, that's an interesting exercise because I've thought about something similar myself where it's like, hey, if I stop posting on LinkedIn tomorrow, like no one's going to notice, you know, like it won't happen. I mean, maybe you would notice, but like, you know, the people closest, but like generally like no one would notice. And it's a funny place I think to find yourself in. Because you're challenged, I guess you're challenged by the validity of a title, right? It's like, what does, what does the title actually mean? And what's it, what's it do for me? What's it do for the people around me? But you were saying something interesting along that path, which was, you know, working on ourselves, right? At an individual level, this is what it is. And I'm interested if you can dive into that a bit more, because it's something that I've also noticed on my end from all the conversations with architects.

B I think it's that we haven't changed what we do enough to move the needle. When I say we aren't working on ourselves, the interesting thing is now that you say that back to me, it's kind of also like, as individuals, and if you look at the professional development that even happens in large firms, I don't think we do enough. Or we get enough support individually to inherit the knowledge we need to begin to think about how we would evolve and change things and do things differently than we otherwise would. So whether that is collectively as a business or even individually as a person who is looking to be more of an intrapreneur and change things, I think we really struggle with circling back to what you said, are, like, what what are some, what's some outside inspiration that we can take or some lessons learned that we can take and that we can apply to what we're doing to make ourselves better? I think the biggest struggle is like, I, I think we make incremental changes. I will never be excited about like getting that detail just right, but I know there's architects out there that get really excited about getting that detail just right. And, you know, in their eyes, that's like a, that's an improvement. But for me, it's an improvement upon what we have always done. And I think we need to be questioning what we have always done and why we've done that.

B And that takes a little self-reflection to be willing to ask that question.

C I mean, it takes self-reflection and I think more so the thing that gets in the way other than the self-reflection is Time. It takes time and energy.

B It does take time and energy.

C And that's like such a common pushback, you know, to hear on things like this is it's like, I don't have the time to do that. Like I'm busy, like delivering and executing on the things that I'm agreeing to. And, you know, there's time and there's risk involved with talking about these different models. And so I think that, that gets in the way a lot, right? Of like, of, of implementing something different because I agree, you're right. It's like, there's always incremental changes happening. But they're like happening within the traditional model, you know, the changes that happen outside of that, like someone's, someone's taking a risk to do that.

B Someone's taking a risk. And it's not only like a, like it's a money risk, like it's a risk away from your ability to do what you're doing well and you already know how to do. It's also usually a financial risk, but that risk and that need for time is something that I've really struggled with because like it's one of like the downroads spirals. I want to start like a list of downward spirals of the industry, but if we don't ever create that time, then there's never going to be room for true innovation in the industry. And there's a wealth of knowledge and support over there about even the lack of dollars and funding that go into the— a part of the AEC industry when it comes to innovation and research. But our model since we run on such tight margins, means that we can't— it's like really, really hard within the model to even create that time, which is why Practice of Architecture in a way started looking at how— started focusing on operations, right? If I can squeeze the operation side to give you back the time, then maybe you will have the time for you to start thinking the way that I think we need to start thinking to evolve the industry. So it's, yeah, I feel that time crunch though.

C The time crunch is real, but I mean, out of curiosity, like that model that's kind of in your mind, right? Because the profession is very much so stuck, right, in this fee-for-service model for decades and decades and decades. And you kind of just mentioned it there. It's like, you know, you started Practice of Architecture as a mechanism maybe for looking at the operations and if there's something we can do there to enable enough time for this innovation. What model or models, I guess, best serve where we want the industry to be, where it does have the space for innovation and where we can actually devote enough time to invest into that?

B Well, I mean, I think the easiest thing is what additional services can we tack on right now where we can get paid not on an hourly rate, Or even if we are getting paid on an hourly rate, we're getting paid a lot more on an hourly rate. I know you talk a lot about the need to raise our baseline fees, and I don't, I don't disagree with anything you have to say, but I also think it's really hard to, unless you are differentiating yourselves and repackaging and selling yourself differently on the market to deliver the exact same thing that you're delivering and say, but I want to get paid more for it.

C 1000%. Yeah, totally agree. Total agreement of that. You're right. Because it is, I give a surface-level declaration when I say that, like, everyone should raise their feet. It's like, that's true. People that work with me closely and the members of my community and things, they know the mechanisms behind how I'm encouraging people to do that. But yeah, you're right.

C It's not arbitrary necessarily. It's very much so attached to a lot of different things.

B Right. But I think the other thing, so because of that, I would say is like my first go-to would be, is there a service that you can deliver before or after that you could either package differently? Like a lot of, a lot of, a lot of architecture firms, especially those in the public sector or those that work with a lot of large organizations and institutions, I feel give away a lot of their programming fee. Because they get the RFP, the program's there, and they're saying like, me, you know, you guys did your data gathering, but we have our own way of doing our data gathering, mostly because they didn't gather all the data that they needed to create the correct program to build the building. So then they work it into their fee structure, but really they're kind of giving away that piece so they can get the architecture job. So is there a way where we can really carve out different pre- and post-traditional services that one, we've already just been giving away, but we just actually haven't been calling it anything and saying this is a value that we're delivering and this is why it needs to happen. So one, can we recapture that? And then two, with all of the things that are happening with sensor tech and the building, the internet of things and the AI overlay, can we even get into like beyond talking about post-occupancy surveys and talking about like how do architects maintain, be a part of the maintenance of the buildings that we've handed over? So I feel like I'm not asking a ton. I feel like it's just like looking at what you're already doing, looking at the talent that you have in-house and saying, are there additional services that, even professional services that we can carve out of it? The next level of that would be, are there things that we can look to productize? So, if you are even a K-12 architecture firm that is, I don't know, has a unique way of doing something or a unique detail that you are delivering. For instance, when the architects working on the Apple Store, they patented the glass stairway, but they wrote their contract wrong because Apple owns the patent to the glass stairway.

B The architects don't own the patent to the glass stairway. So, are there things also that we are doing and delivering and that we can capture extra value on that we are giving away.

C I mean, for sure, yeah, beginning and middle, I guess. I think middle is what I probably focus on in my energy. It's like, I think we can be getting more out of the things that we're already doing because we're just not communicating your value well enough on that. But I totally agree, like things at the beginning and things at the end are certainly being given away in one way or another, usually towards, you know, towards an effort of, I guess, good faith, business development, whatever you want to say, of scarcity mindset, maybe of any way to kind of get an edge into what you're doing. But I like this vision. What I, how I translated what you were saying about like post-occupancy, right? What happens there, different ways of architects being involved with the maintenance of the building. This idea that every building has an architect and not like it does now where it's like, hey, there was an architect at that building, but actively, presently every building has an architect, kind of like every building has a facilities manager or something like that. Every building has an architect.

C It's like a subscription model. I did my newsletter this past week about alternative fee structures for architects and subscription is one of them that came to mind because that would be like, you have an architect, like maybe the building has an architect, right? And they are, you know, they get up to however many hours a week, or maybe, maybe actually I take that back, detach hours from it, detach hours from it entirely. But it's like you're paying a subscription to, you know, to ideate on concepts, you know, spatial concepts on a regular basis, or to increase the productivity across the companies and teams that are working inside of the building, or to continually improve and expand the legacy of the home that you're leaving behind, like any of those things. But there's— that's an ongoing effort, as we know. I mean, it could be. It certainly could be. But right now, it's always contained within a timeline.

B Right. No. And that is actually— it's interesting to me. So one of my business school friends lives down the street from me. She started this business called Honey Homes.

A It's a subscription fee for a contractor.

B That, and a part of it is like reminding you when you need to change your filters. How many things have you specified in your buildings that require maintenance over the long term of the building? And what if you could just build an app that reminds people when they need to do maintenance on the building? And it's, sure, it's like a smaller bite, but $20 a month over the life of a building, out of every building you design, that can begin to add up.

C As any SaaS founder will tell you, you know, it's the volume of it. But I think that's in line with the vision that you were talking about before. It's like yours isn't so much about— isn't— well, you are more focused on volume, right? It's like, how many people can I impact? And not to say that that's like a hit on quality, but naturally, there's a bear— like, the barrier has to be a little bit lower if you want to go after that higher volume. So yeah, a product that's $20 a month would be great. Building that out. Everyone, we need, we need more software, right? Evelyn, I'm here, I'm handing you over a magic wand, right? I've handed you a magic wand. You get to wave that over the architecture industry and you get to make one change today. What's that one change that you would do? Yeah, I'm not giving you 3 wishes.

C I'm not, I'm not a genie in a bottle over here.

B That every person working in a firm had one day to think about how they would do things within their practice differently and still get paid the same amount they do.

C Yeah.

B Time. I'd want to give them the time to think about what they're doing and how we can do things differently.

C I love the notion of this just because you didn't even ask for a lot. One day, literally one day for every person to think about something.

B I was thinking about one day a week. That becomes 52 hours. Like, that becomes more.

C Now you're upping it. Now you're upping it by 52x. Oh my gosh.

B Who isn't taking one day out of the year though, to even think about this?

C That's a great question to think back on. Like, are you spending at least one day a year thinking about, thinking about how your business is actually operating and not like, you know, from a finance, not like looking at your finances and doing accounting. I don't think that's what you're talking.

B About, Evelyn, but like literally from a strategic standpoint. Yes.

C Yeah. That's a great question. I fear the answer to that question.

B Because I was like, I just, I've.

C Spoken to enough architects as have you. Yeah. To know what the answer to that question is. Or for most people.

B Okay. Yeah. So one day for everybody in the firm, preferably one day a week, which would be like the Google model.

C Tech knows how to do well. I mean, Google's turned out okay.

B Well, software scales and they don't even make their money off of subscriptions. They get their money off of ads and data.

C Maybe there's, maybe there's data that architects can collect along the way too.

B Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation. We need to start stop naming our file final. When I think about architects and when I think about architects, the data conversation, I very quickly and mockingly go to our file naming structure and how many final finals we have hidden in all of our folders.

C Yes, everyone has that. So we've waved the magic wand, right? We're giving everyone a day to think about. And by the way, y'all, like you can do that now. It's called a Saturday and a Sunday. You get like 52 of those.

B 52 of those. Yeah.

C Try to take one. I mean, try to take one, but also, hey, if you can't take a day away from your business without it absolutely like breaking down, then there's probably some other issues there.

B That's another issue. And literally, literally when I talk about building the business that I want to build, I just went with a walk, a walk and talk. With a good friend and mentor of mine who's building her own business right now. She's actually the founder of Women Defining AI, Helen Kupp. She's been on the podcast a few times. But we've collectively decided that we are going to take one day a month in the middle of the week to go on an extra long hike together and just not worry about work.

C That's nice. Yeah. You're starting from it though. That's really important. I mean, not starting, the business has been around for a while, but you can implement that now. Let's say you're restarting because, hello, you're welcome back again. But you are intentionally implementing that, which to me, like, that's a great takeaway here because it's a good strategy to put into place. You don't build your business first and then your life second.

C You have to build the business around the life that you want.

B Exactly.

C Because if you don't, it's so much harder to insert that later on. Like the people that have been running a firm for 10 years right now, and they're probably working 6 days a week and they're listening to this and they're like, no, I can't insert a day. It's like, that's true. That's going to be hard to do. You're going to have to do some backwards tracking to fit it in. But for people that are getting started from the beginning or early on in the process, like, put those things in now and work your way around them because that's a much easier mechanism. I feel like you answered— I was going to ask you about, like, what's the one thing that an architect listening to this should take away?

B I think between the two of us, I feel like there's several tidbits that they could have taken away. But I do think, I mean, for me, it's always going to be time. For me, it's I feel like each of us have our own little lanes that we kind of swim in and we support each other in and there's congruencies to them. But for me, it's always going to be down to the business model. And we consistently talk about how what we deliver should be valued at a higher price point. And my next question is always, okay, then what are we doing about it? And I'm not saying that money solves all of our issues, but money will go a long way to making the profession competitive, to making sure that people not only— that individuals, especially Gen Z, who really desire it, have a life outside of work as well as a life inside of work. Money enables us to give, to support family leave programs. Right, where if you want to be competitive with tech, you need to give people like 6 months off.

B And that, like, that's just something we can't do right now.

C Yes. Yeah, you need, you need the revenue. I think my takeaway is similar, is in exactly the same vein, which is just that, you know, you, the listener, you are in control of your career and your business. And you shouldn't rely on myself. You shouldn't rely on Evelyn. You shouldn't rely on the AIA. You shouldn't rely on any professional organization or wait for something like that to happen, like you can go out and do it. No one is stopping you from going after the large project that you want.

C Nothing is standing in the way of you raising your fees, right? Except for whatever you see in the path that you can literally, like you can personally move those things out of the way and start pushing your way forward. And so if all of the individuals listening, you know, take that upon themselves, then as a whole, the industry will absolutely shift and change. Because it happens at the individual level first.

B And I also think we've become so risk-averse. So, the best advice that my husband has ever given me, and that I repeat constantly now, is you really don't have a decision to make until you have a decision to make. So, it's not, I don't have enough people to support the big job. Like, you can't say, you can't look at an RFP and say, I don't have enough people to support that. If you go after that job and then you get it, then you have a decision to make about how you stand up your firm.

C Yes.

B In order to support it.

C Beautiful way to say that. I love that. Yes, you have to do the thing to create the problem. The more things you do, you are going to have more problems along the way, but problems are not a bad thing. They don't go away. Problems are here for you right now when you're small. Problems are going to be there for you when you're big.

B But don't make a decision about a problem that you don't truly have. Yet.

C Yeah, especially one based on fear. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, it's like, don't, don't resist going after the thing that you want because you're afraid of the problems that will arise if it happens.

B Don't start thinking about the conversation that you have to have with your boss and your clients if you switch to a different firm before you've actually accepted a job at a different firm.

C Great philosophy from your husband. Evelyn, thank you so much. Welcome back. We're happy to have you. Thanks for letting me host your podcast.

B Yeah, thank you, Tyler, so much for helping me kick off season 12. I appreciate it.

A Hi, disruptors. Thank you for joining us today on an episode of Practice Disrupted. If you like the content for today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practiceofarchitecture.com/podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers, and other disruptors in our community at practiceofarchitecture.com/community. Our social media handle is @practiceofarch. That's practice of A-R-C-H. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a DM and say hello. Tune in next week week for a new conversation on change in the profession.