¶ Podcast Intro
it's in LA it's it's just off Melrose Ave. So it's a very like prominent retail district
If you've been tuning in, you already know him. You love him. And that is Alexander Buckridge, an architect based in NYC. He just started his own architecture firm a few weeks ago, and he just landed his first project.
I'll do essentially 4 weeks of concept with 2 weeks of detailed content. Development,
So, we reflect on how it actually happened.
it's motivating. I would say it's actually quite motivating.
And, what he needs to do next to knock it out of the park.
it's like I'm there to set up a system to create it and let it run in the best way possible that
¶ Starting a Promising Client Meeting
So last we chatted, you were about to go into a, promising meeting, we thought, with a client That you'd fast tracked into kind of a week or two, a very immediate information and a possible opportunity. And, it seemed like it was moving in the direction of maybe being your first clients. How did that meeting go?
Yeah. it was about five days. I got, connected to him on a call and various that led to going on a kind of a pitch. And, yeah, it was obviously it was positive. So I came out of that and went through the steps of taking them through. what I've done previously, what kind of different tiering options of engagement we could do and et cetera,
¶ Securing the First Client
et cetera. And I think leaving the call, I felt good, but as anything you never know. And, about an hour later I got a phone call to say that I wanted to proceed, which is obviously very positive, and that we would get into the, nitty-gritty, specifics and on the following Monday. So that was really what happened. I got on a call on the Monday then to discuss. A little bit more on the budget, a little bit more on the contract specifics and how we wanted to do that.
And, I had sent over a letter of intent that they baked into the contract. And so we were just A little bit of back and forth, a little bit for me scrambling as well, in terms of there's stuff in there that is new to me that I'm dealing with myself in terms of the intellectual property and stuff like that. So, I did my best, let's just say right now with what I could, and then at the same time, it's a very expedited
¶ Project Details and Initial Steps
schedule. the way this, is formatted is I'll do essentially 4 weeks of concept with 2 weeks of detailed content. Development, which I would work with a contractor who will step in and take over drawing sets, fabricators, shop drawings, everything permitting won't be too much required. It's ultimately interior renovations, some electrical. and yeah, it's very exciting. it's in LA it's just off Melrose Ave. So it's a very like prominent retail district, in the city.
It's in West Hollywood, which is nice. for me, it was a great moment to. actually have flown out there just last week to see the site, to meet the clients. It's all happening very fast, but yeah, it all went through those different steps and it all happened very instantly. So yeah, I'm already kicking off concept today, Monday. it's all running.
¶ Celebrating the Win
That is so awesome. And, huge congratulations. And I'm so excited for you. I know you texted me, he texted me over the weekend. I was just getting ready to go on a trip or else I was like, I would love to Kind of jump on a call and celebrate in some way. But, would text me later that day, actually, when we recorded the previous episode and said that you got it and we were just getting in the car, getting ready to go on a road trip, I remember.
And I told my wife, I was like, Alex got the project and we did a little celebration as a family for
¶ Reflections on the Journey
you.
it's a nice moment to get to that point. even on this journey with yourself or with anyone else that has been around me, it's everyone thinks about taking that leap, right? taking that jump out to go out by yourself. And it's scary. It's on, it's very, it's challenging. You don't know what's going to happen. But for, when these moments do happen, it's feel a level of this could work, this can be something, and you're starting to get a sense of this brand or this business taking you on a journey.
And that's how I feel actually, since I've started this, I feel like. I'm putting this vision out there and I'm going with it. And, I've really enjoying the people that are coming into it and then being part of it. I've been sure you could, you get that journey yourself too. it's pretty easy. it's motivating. I would say it's actually quite motivating.
It should be motivating. you did, we've talked about this a little bit before, but I'm not sure if we've dove into it because. I get mixed up now what, the mixture between our private conversations and our recorded
¶ Planning and Preparation
consultations here. But, you did it right in the sense that you gave yourself necessary padding, right? You saved up money. And you said, okay, I'm giving myself the time to start this business correctly. And you didn't formally launch that business until, this month. And so you actually came in and you landed what I would consider to be an ideal client. Like literally your, it's to me, it seems like we would quite literally be like a perfect representation of your ideal client.
Yeah. Yeah.
you did it within a month. of launching your new practice, which is incredible. it's so incredible. And I think that's because you gave yourself the space, you, you planned out the launch.
¶ Balancing Work and Growth
you put a lot of work onto the backend that people that like, Clients aren't going to see, but obviously we see now that we've been doing this podcast for this long, or these consultations for that long, but I'm curious to know if you think that, now you've landed the first project and there's first of many, but getting to this first project, was it more or less work than you anticipated it to be?
No, it was definitely, it's definitely more work. I think, you need to have a lot of irons in the fire. And I think that's something that will be forever the situation. I think that's. of course, it's a lot of hustle, but it's a lot of conversations and opening doors and teasing out different opportunities. And are they really, and that filtering process.
So it really comes down to a lot of the fundamentals of what we've been discussing around the business development, pipeline, how to initiate that, how to, Find that niche that you're looking for. And it's all a discovery process for me right now. And then it's a lot of new information being taken on board. and this is a good case study of an example where it did play out well. And this was due to the emails we had sent out to the, whatever it was, 90 people.
And, even just following up with them individually, each person and then having to, Send them because of like warm up emails.
I had to send them almost individually as well It's a lot of work, it's a lot of thought behind it to get to the point I think there's a lot of like for me It was a lot of appreciation of you know also this client taking as my first proper project in terms of There's a lot of appreciation for giving me that chance because there's a lot of people sitting on the fence there's a lot of people who potentially do have stuff going on and are but they're sitting there and I'm And I think, that I was
glad there was someone who would take that jump, and then you go through that journey then with them,
you're right. it does take a little bit of a first adopter, perspective from those clients. it's the first adopter for you in terms of, yeah, you started your own practice, but this is your bread and butter
Yeah, And also the transition has actually been quite nice. I've been discussing it recently. I was chatting with a friend and then I was saying that like when you're in the mentality of over the last year of thinking about what you're doing, your business, building it up. Meeting people as your own entity. I think the transition was a little bit more gradual and it was a bit more seamless in terms of when I transitioned out to myself, I already had systems in place.
I already had thought about different things and yeah, I think that has all helped with this kind of like being out by myself and feeling like bar some, contractual things that are still a bit out of my wheelhouse and the more admin end of it. I think otherwise it feels like it's the natural progression through and I think project typology helps. I think, that obviously I'm working through that network that I've, I've loosely known. So that helps.
Yeah. having the experience that you've had is perfect,
¶ Building a Sustainable Business
right? you've worked in a lot of different, areas of a business and then also having the chance to be a director and having people work underneath you, I think is really important to, especially as you continue to possibly get more projects and consider scaling and what that looks like in terms of managing a team. Because that's. a whole nother animal. that's a whole nother animal that's, difficult to manage too.
And it is crazy to think that all of these things, all of these are things that you have to tackle when you make that decision to run an architecture firm, right? You think that you're making the decision to finally be in a position where you get to pursue your own vision for your projects and then. You realize, it's not totally your vision. It's more the client's vision that you're helping to execute. and you put your touch on and then you're like, I can run my own business.
And then you realize, you're going to have to bring in a team and all of those team members are going to have their own personality as well. And you're going to need to find the ways to adapt that and build that culture. And then, you got to go out and get those projects. People don't just come to you. And so there's so many parts to it. a few months into it, I just feel like you're navigating it so well. So it's. It's encouraging to see, and I hope that it's motivating for everyone else.
That's followed along the process too.
Yeah, and it's been nice. I have had some people reach out, to me on Instagram and stuff who, who have said I'm thinking about doing that as well. And I even reached out and said, let's grab a coffee when I was in L. A. And I met one or two people who just been following me loosely. I don't know them at all. And some of them just got into, professional practice now and left education.
And it's been quite nice because yeah, again, as I'm saying, that people are feeding into this journey you're on and they're interested in also going on their own. And so I hope it is an example of it's people were saying like, Oh, what did you have set up? And it's, it is true. There is no right time to do this. I think you do need a base level of like understanding of how projects are run teams or run people. You need some business acumen around it, but not all of it.
You don't need it all polished. You don't need it all figured out. I think the biggest part is probably the leap realistically, like actual jump with a cushion as well. you'd want yourself a nice little rainy day for whatever we said, three to six months, I think, and then just, give it a blast yeah, well, you start to feel like it can work,
Yes. When you see the light, not even the light at the tunnel, that's the wrong way to say it, but like like a step forward,
like a, it's like a slither, you can see that there's light further in the distance that you're walking towards and you're like, okay, there's a direction now that I can see a path unfolding, and then it's yeah, it gives you that, optimism and enthusiasm to keep going and these are all small things, the small things are a big deal. It's Even if I'm meeting someone and they're interested in what I do and supporting what I do, that, that, makes me feel it's all worth it,
Yeah, absolutely.
¶ Navigating the Challenges
So now that you've landed this project, how much of your time. Are you planning to devote to it? Because that is a very short timeline. And basically if you have six weeks, you have a six week sprint
Basically, yeah.
I have a six week sprint and then I have oversight for the following six weeks to whatever it ends up actually being, but that's that's a real challenge right now because I was overseeing and managing majority of the time for while I want to mind my previous role and so I was dealing with that end of it and now it's more getting back into the weeds and I've back out with sketching back out with drawing back out with getting into 3d and still fundamentally that shouldn't be doing as the as Big
picture, but I think for right now it's good for me to sit down and figure out my systems. And it's actually a perfect project. I will say for figuring out how I'm going to put my decks together and what that format looks like, and how am I going to use it's, we're all workflow, my model, how am I layering it? How's it going to be?
So then the idea for me is that like going through all that, I'll be able to have able to bring people in and they'll be able to follow a pretty straightforward system, but I will say that it's taking up, close to, All my time in concept if it's six weeks, right? So I'm trying to figure out.
how to balance that a little bit with making sure i'm still checking in with people making sure that i'm still putting my voice out there on social media so that it's you know It's not a it's not a black hole that i've suddenly gone into which i'm absolutely you can see the black hole occurring and you're designing this thing and you're You know and you're buried under special and you're just focused on that and I do need this is a huge priority For me, there's no doubt.
I need this to be executed at a high level on a short period of time. And it's a very important, stepping stone. So I'm trying to balance that out right now.
yeah. you said something that's really important though, in terms of this being your first project. And I think, I think it's something that's easy to overlook, but. I think it comes from two things. One is that you're thinking about the future and you have intentions of scaling the firm to some extent, we haven't really talked about what you want this to be yet, but I'm sure you have a vision. It sounds to me like of some to the point where you're going to have maybe five or 10 people total.
And I'm not saying like within the first year, but maybe within the first few years, you might have that amount of people. and so you're being really operationally minded about it, meaning that you're starting something and you're like, okay, I'm If I'm going to be doing this, how will I teach someone else this? and I have a process in place, is everything that I'm doing possible to be replicated by someone else? And I think that's a really important way to think about it.
And it's not that the way that you're doing it now has to be the way that, that it is in six months. There has to be the way, exactly the way that it is when you finally do.
Decide to bring on additional support, but thinking about that way now makes it so much easier, and helps you skip the line for in a few months when it does make sense to bring on that additional support and you have already been thinking that way you might already have, loom recordings or SOPs in place, like standard operating procedures in place, some of these things that just make it significantly easier and more seamless to bring on that additional help.
So I think that's, I think that's really important. you've got like a cheat code going on right now. Like you're thinking, this isn't a one time thing. I'm going to be doing these same processes over and over and over again. So how can I make it more repeatable? How can I optimize that process? How can I make it easier for not just myself to do it, but for everyone else to do it too? so that's really important.
I think that's something that I've either been, always conscious of or reading. It's it's having. As the business leader or whatever you want to call it, it's like I'm there to set up a system to create it and let it run in the best way possible that gives everyone that comes into it the ability to do great work to be, contributing to something. And I feel that's my role now is to set that line like that kind of chain for people to come in.
And I am already thinking about, if I'm bringing people in to help me with renderings, 3D, putting the deck together right now. need to have the right package to say, make it easier for them to be like, I get it, that work makes sense. I can do that exercise without me losing too much time over explaining. So the interesting thing right now is where it's like, it's good. I'm like, let me get this system somewhat good and figure out. And then let me figure out how I'm going to share it.
Like even the software is that we're all using right now. Like it's, it is very different, whether it's for presentations or whether it's what I'm using to render or whatnot, it's a lot of it. Now you can jump in and just be on the cloud. And then I feel like I need, I want to be as, I can. Flexible as possible and dynamic. So everything that I want to use in the business, I want others to be able to just jump in and not as much barriers and walls and, all that stuff, which it was there.
And when I started my journey in architecture, it was like you had a hard drive, you plugged in the hard drive, you had. all these crack softwares that you were trying to get in and, it was just such a much more complicated thing. And now it's very interesting moment for starting a business because you just don't know what the possibility is and what extent you need people and production in it because of everything that's going on. So it's actually.
That's something I'm thinking about and how I want it to be,
Yeah. You mean like for almost building out the software stack, right? You want that to be readily accessible and
ready, accessible, easily for me to call someone and say, Hey, can you jump in here and do that? Hey, I'm bringing in someone that I've not worked with before, which is a big thing, right? At the start, it's you're probably going to bring in people that you've not, have that much experience, And then it's like, how can they easily get through the steps? my first hire won't be, a project manager,
Right.
it's going to be somewhere more junior level. So it's being able to have that structure for them to be able to do what they do. And it's just interesting, again, are we all in studio? Are we all remote? These are all bigger questions about like how this is going to work and what my lifestyle is and what I want from this business rather than, so it's all stuff figuring out as I go here.
Yeah. But it's important to be asking those questions now rather than later. I can tell you, I almost, I pretty much made this mistake because I was, I went and started my own, design studio because I was like, I want to be in control of my time. Which by the way, don't start a business if that's your goal, because you're not going to be in control of your time. you know, and I also wanted to be location independent. and I forgot about the second half of that.
And I realized like two years into it, I was like, I'm not location independent at all. I'm all of my projects are local. I actually, like I built all of this network and these relationships locally. And, there's nothing like if I leave. Where I'm at, I don't have work.
even though I knew that, this is one of the things that I wanted the location independence, but then I realized I'd put myself into a position where it was going to be really difficult for me to be location independent, in what I was doing. thinking about it now and being. Not like not giving up on that because there is, I think there is always a way to get to that. you're doing a bit of lifestyle design, right? you're designing around the lifestyle that you want.
And I think that there is for the most part. a way to get there, there's a way to design that lifestyle that you want. It's just that it's probably not a common path, it's a unique practice that you're building. like a typical architecture firm, right? You're not trying to find an office to rent in, New York city and growing a local team and, only doing projects in the city. Like you're doing projects all over the world that we've talked about, right? You've talked about hiring a remote team.
Global team as well. And so what you're starting is what I would consider to be personally, like the future of the practice. I hope that more architects are moving in this direction because I think it's healthier. I think it's better. I think this is where the world is going. I think this is how you get the most talented team and produce the best work. and do all of these things, but it's not a common path.
No,
forging away a little bit.
yeah. and that's the part where I'm like, you know, when you're always foreseeing and looking out for models to look at and Oh, that, that, looks really good. And how did they do that? I think with this one, it's I'm like, I'm not too sure how this is going to play out in my mind. I have ideas around Having some core people here and then, but ultimately being a lot more flexible and dynamic between Europe and the U S and so forth. And, it's just like figuring out how that actually will play out.
and, I think it's listening to what, people want as well. at my previous role and I would have dealt with a lot of the ins and outs with the individuals. They wanted to have the ability to work from wherever they wanted to, have that flexibility and, I think that will become more prevalent, that will just keep becoming a thing. And it's if that's what they want, why not give it? And that's what I want as well. eventually figuring out what that culture is, how do you sustain it?
It'll be bigger questions down the line. How, when do we get together? How do we, so yeah, I've like a lot of unknowns there going on around how that's all going to play out. But then other companies in different industries have been doing this for,
Oh, forever. Oh my gosh. Our architecture is decades behind. Yeah, for
we're decades behind and I think it's just, again, it's a systems thing and it's like how I know it's a tangible thing that we're in terms of things are getting built physically.
i've been working globally and you land in somewhere and you work, you know Therefore you can do sprints of two weeks and you have very personal relationship with the client the contractor and you just you know You leave and you put all your energy in that period yeah, it's good conversation because I think it's one for a lot of people to think about As they go out at this moment in time and over the next few years
Yeah. And hopefully who's ever listening, you didn't hear it. Hopefully this isn't the first time that you've heard it, but let's just make this very clear. There's a lot of things that you don't know. When you're starting a business and you have a vision for what you want that to be. And I think the most important thing that you're doing is that you're making progress rather than just making movements, meaning you're moving in a direction, right?
you're moving, you're making progress in a specific direction rather than just like moving around, but not actually moving toward anything, right? It's like sitting in place and, or it's like running the difference between running in place and actually. Walking, in a direction and sometimes it's better to, to slowly walk in the direction that you want rather than to run in place and make a lot of movement. I'm excited for you. I'm excited for the, I'm excited for
¶ Podcast Outro
the vision.