When To Start An Architecture Firm

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And so throughout university and doing internships and, getting out of Ireland and traveling through, France and working in Holland and all these different places, I was always in the back of my mind, like thinking to myself, what would I do? What would I take from this place and take with me to do my own thing? Eventually that journey became a lot longer than I anticipated, to be perfectly honest.

It was about 10 years after I left university that I stayed working in practice and, learned a ton of a lot. I did four years in Paris and had a great time there doing this architect experience and then, decided to get out of France and go to New York and, got started off working in a bit more of a corporate end with, with, with one firm. And then.

Ended up at some architecture where things were definitely a bit more artistic, a bit more, playful, and that was much more in line with what I was doing in general. very creative, very conceptual work, and, definitely tried different things along the way. and all of those experiences ultimately led me to starting my own practice and, gathering up knowledge, got chartered, with the UK system and the Irish, and, Eventually said to myself, uh, I think it's time kick this off.

maybe because I'm now 36, maybe it's I feel like I've built that wealth of knowledge. I don't think you ever have enough, but I feel the push was, necessary to get me going. no better place I think in my mind to be a small startup entrepreneurial in New York City. so yeah, I think that's where I decided to kick it off.

And scale, you've had plenty of opportunities to jump in and use those experiences to inform what you're going to be doing now.

So seeing that bandwidth, I think has just been pretty extraordinary for me to understand the impact you're building has on the urban environment and the, to how you interact with the actual materials and the feeling of the space and That was pretty wild just to like experience all those different layers, but also experience the corporate side of it more to the, conceptual side of it and both having their pluses and minuses.

Ultimately, I found that actually really fascinating that we could spin our wheels and forever design and in a certain conceptual area and.

And at times probably not be as profitable and then, but in the corporate realm, I felt, there's a lot of structure in place that was super helpful for me, particularly as I go into my own practice, understanding systems, understanding, being very disciplined around scope, schedule fee, which is, now I see the benefits to that, but then I didn't enjoy the work, I did not enjoy, me.

The buildings we were implementing, I did not enjoy the spaces we were designing, but credibly efficient, credibly, one of the best systems that I probably learned was from there. So it's actually really fascinating. And then actually just coming last as an architect once, you know, I assumed the director role there, obviously I got exposure to running the entire practice. So for me, that was invaluable. At that point, I could take let's say seven years.

And then those seven years run with it for a couple of years as an architecture and help the partners and help the people in the industry in the business itself, grow and learn. And they allowed me to grow and learn and make mistakes, and I found that invaluable as I now segue into my own thing, now knowing how to run roughly about a 10 person

And how important it is to have, great clients be out there getting new work continuously and making sure that, there's a pipeline of work coming through. And I think I just, those were particularly big learning curves, because no matter what happens. You can have the most talented team, you can have the most talented people, but without the work coming in and without, stuff happening, there's no creativity, right? There's a whole thing about that.

It's no business, no creativity, so I think for me, that was a big learning curve because I actually saw it in the two other firms at different scales as well. and so for me, I came out of thinking to myself, this is not just about design. this is about, business, you know, ultimately.

Because design is your differentiator among other architects because they're, we're all trained to be able to identify those really minute differences and we can look at something and say, wow, that's really well done. the vast majority of clients do not have that capability. They don't have that training. They don't have the same eyes. They're not looking at things in the same way. there's different, sure, there's different thresholds of design, right?

Like you can, most people can spot the difference between maybe a bad designer and a great designer. once you kind of pass different thresholds of a great designer to a really great designer to top tier designer, like it's really tough for just the average client to notice these differences. And to your point, you can be as talented as you want, but if you actually are not working on business development, if you're not working on bringing in clients, then. It doesn't matter.

You're not gonna be able to build a business.

I would say that specifically with architecture and in our architects in Europe versus architects in the U. S. I think here there's this understanding and more inherent want to go after money, to, to understand business and marketing even more so than what I experienced over there. And I always found that like super motivating and beneficial to be surrounded by that.

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And I think the issue with that line of thought is that mission and vision is going to be different in like two months. It's going to be different after, maybe after you get your first few clients. it can be more of a bottleneck, than anything if you focus too much on this mission and vision statement.

it.

I think they're personally passionate, so I'm trying to align with that. things like breweries, distilleries, retreats, restaurants, all that kind of like more and stuff.

I would be eventually, well, I would like to kind of more get into, but, initially off the bat, you know, I'm, and I think we might've touched on this before, way back when we first connected, but as I said, trying to get through stuff probably that I can know I can turn out pretty straightforward and get through, you know, without too much complexity and get my first few projects under my belt. So that's what my current thinking is.

I think this is going to go from As you said, we have two years, four years, 10 years. one thing that like with SNAR architecture, what we have done and what approach was is that we, and I don't know, this is a conversation for us to have is there was like take on any typology was the attitude of we can do anything.

And the thinking was, is that, at the end of the day, the program changes, infrastructure of the requirements changes, but ultimately you're designing environments and experiences for people. And I think to me, sometimes what I do struggle with is that question of what is your particular niche you want to get into and I do see fluidity throughout all the market, you know, I do see like that.

I can bring impact and value to each different area of it, whether that's a barber shop, whether that's a retail space, whether it's a residential, and that's something I'm curious about to talk to you about as well as I know it's probably better to be very pigeonholed in one way, but it doesn't feel natural for me also at the same time. So that's an interesting one.

that regardless of what market you're in, what you were designing is a human experience. and you're saying that's something that you learned from SNARKitecture. And so I see that actually as a positioning exercise, where you, if you do it well, if you can describe that clearly enough, then you can actually convince any market to kind of work with you because you're still doing something really specific, you're still working on whatever, scale that is, right?

It's it's working through exactly how to describe that in the best way. it's a little bit of a double sided coin because. there's great books around category design is essentially what they call this, right? And so it's where you're almost defining your own category when you're starting a business. that can be really problematic because people don't know what this category is. And so there's usually a certain scale that you have to hit. Before you can define a category.

But a lot of people will start off and say something really specific. So, for example, like a clear mistake that you could make based on what you were just saying is that like, I'm a human scale designer. Or something like that. Right? Like that's, that's, it's a category that no one's gonna know what it means when they read it. And so there's always this exercise that you have to do in terms of, you almost have to think about, it's like a, like SEO, like search engine optimization, right?

What are people going to be searching for? What question are they actually going to ask before they need your service? And so that's where you need to think about it in their terms. Like, are people going to be asking for, are they just going to be asking for retail design? And that's fine, right? If that's. If that's the actual question that they're asking, but you have to then figure out how to position yourself within that realm and within their language.

that's how you build up the top of funnel. Again, you can then educate the client after they come into your funnel. But you need to meet them where they're at, at the top. And that's really all a positioning exercise, right? So if you're trying to do something that's maybe a little bit different, which it is, right? But if you're just talking about, hey, I can actually work on. any typology of project, but I very specifically work at this more human scale.

yeah, just a matter of finding, what people are asking before they need those services and inserting yourself there at the top of the funnel and then educating the client as you move them down to say, no, I can do this. It's very similar to this other typology project that I did. It's literally the same problem. It's going to be solving you too.

You know, like, I'm trained as an architect, all that good stuff, predominantly resided in the last couple of years in interiors. That just happened. I get just, I went with the flow. I just went with the current and I'm learning and I like seeing how things happen. and furniture too. Cause that kind of like we were, we were doing our own custom furniture. So then it's another thing about what is the service you're providing where these two things are like going together. Right.

It's trying to define your typology, let's say, or Your specific vision that, that, that is grasping upon like people who want to also join that kind of understand it, but also service. Like if we want to get into that, I think if I had to boil it down, I would say interior renovations. but

So here's, that's another like Todd and something that I'm having a bit of tension actually about Cause of working in these various different scales as well and practices is that I do feel a little bit like, you know I have a lot of stuff i've understood and experienced and yeah Then how do you approach that now as a new studio trying to not be a jack of all trades? Which I don't want to be

One is that you have to, walk before you can run, before you can sprint. And there is part of this that's just a, it's both a play in patience. And also a play in listening to your market, that's, really the exercise that you're in right now. where it can be like, you're, you still have a top of line goal of Hey, I need these interior, renovation clients. And maybe as we're moving through the process, it just makes sense that they would actually have a custom piece of furniture in there.

that's an add on that I can offer to them if I feel like I have the bandwidth and it's something that I want to do. But, you know, top of, like, you're not going to go from a business development level, you're not going to be jumping around and just trying to get, one off furniture installations or custom furniture, right?

also understanding different ways that you're positioning that service, that's more of an add on, or that's a cross sell, actually, which is something that I just wrote about in the newsletter, I can link that in the show notes. And these are great things that can increase revenue, whether you're doing it yourself or whether it's something that you're outsourcing. So this is especially applicable to you doing interior renovations, right?

There's obviously standard furniture that people can use, or they're going to be custom designed and custom built. And that's a perfect cross sell, right? the vast majority of the clients that you're going to be work with are going to be interested in that. And so then it's really just a matter of kind of testing as you're bringing these clients on. Does it make sense for me to offer that at the beginning? Or is that just like too much for them to handle?

Or is it something that like, Hey, after we're getting through the conceptual design phase, starting to get into design development, and I'm listening to them, it seems like they need something custom. So now it makes sense to offer them that service. those things are really just about, they're just about listening, but again, you want to keep in mind that Top level, right? Top level, I need interior renovation clients.

These other things are justthey're going to come, tothey have to be needed in the market, right? Or else they're just going to be a wasted pursuit.

It's going to evolve. It's going to grow.

this is exactly why I'm, meeting you for coffee and having other coffee conversations now is that I think this is what I want to do. What do I also want to make sure that I'm solving the right problems? it's a two sided thing. Like it's both, it's a combination of what you want to do and what you can do. And then also what the market is telling you is needed.

Because if you're not taking in, if you're not taking the market into account, then you know, it's gonna be a long time before you Get a client.

And so you do understand the ways and the desires of what people want more and you adapt, these are just really interesting because I think you're expected to have the answer to a lot of questions. At least you feel like you should have the answer to all these things. But ultimately, you don't really you're here looking to create something that you want to bring people on a journey with and also work with people that you would enjoy with.

Ideally, And, you know, you can create these great experiences and environments for people, you know, and, and whatever that looks like it can be whatever.

I'm sharing, growth hacks and sales marketing and social media for architects, and that's roughly been what I've been doing for the past two years, but I recently had the realization from listening to my market that my audience is responding really strongly to this one thing, and whenever I talk about it. And that's something I've been talking with my wife about a lot. And I was like, it seems like there's actually a really large business opportunity here. And she was like, yeah, that's right.

That does seem like that. It's even more niche than what I'm already doing. And so then what did I do? I had, I was having another conversation with a friend yesterday that had run a very similar business. And I was like, am I being crazy? Is this actually, it seems like this is a problem that needs to be solved. He said, yeah, no, that seems like a problem that does need to be solved. So next up for me is I'm going to be having conversations with people that probably need to solve that problem.

it can change and it can adapt because you don't know exactly what's going to happen. I think until you start listening a little bit more,