Ways to increase sales and profitability in IT architecture documentation

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halfway to 100 episode 50 let's do this this is the business of architecture helping Architects conquer the world and here's your host Enoch Sears welcome back architect Nation this is Enoch Bartlett Sears and this is the show where we talk about what they didn't teach us in school how to run a great business today's segment is our second interview with Steve L Winer ameritus he's the founder and principal of management consulting services a professional consulting firm located in the Austin Texas area and focused on the productivity and profitability of professional design firms he's the co-author of the book financial management for design professionals the path to profitability which by the way if you remember in my first episode OSHA Wilson talked about this book and recommended it as a necessary book if you're planning on moving into a management position or running your own firm now this is a a scripted re-record of our previous interview and we've gone through it and and uh provided what I think is going to be a very valuable interview so I'm really looking forward to this so Steve is currently working on a new and updated version of this book with his co-author Michael tardiff and I wanted to welcome Mr Winer back to the show hi thanks absolutely it is great to have you back and I personally enjoyed our conversation last week I could tell that you have a very very deep knowledge of the business side of architecture and it fits imp perfectly with what we're trying to do here on this program which is spread that information and make sure that people have the resources primarily Architects and the knowledge they need to make the correct decisions that can as a whole help Architects be more prolific flourish and create better design so thank you for what you're doing and what you've devoted your life to well thank you that's very kind of you well I mean it it's true and last week just to give a summary we talked a little bit about some of the common management problems or I guess deficiencies that happen in architecture firms and Steve we talked about your suggestions for how things can be improved we had a great conversation about an employee retention policy how to retain and keep the best talent and of course that is a big investment we talked about communicating and accountability within firms and now Steve I know that you're working on two books now sounds like a lot you're working on the rewrite for your book financial management for design professionals the path to profitability and then also another book about the culture of accountability in professional design firms can you tell us quickly about those two books well yes uh as I've mentioned last week the first book it was published in 2006 now that Michael tart of my co-author and I have the copyright ownership of the book we're doing a rewrite to publish it electronically as an ebook or a Kindle book or whatever forums we might find in the electronic digital media and that will be out sometime later this year it's really nothing more than taking the book and enhancing what was already published we're finding things that needed to be clarified further further expanded it a little bit further we're finding things that needed to be added that weren't in there that would be more helpful in expanding the things that were're talking about that weren't mentioned in the first place and perhaps shortening some of the things that were near weren't nearly as important so it's basically a cleanup and better version of the first printing without making wholesale changes to it the accountability book is something that I am just beginning in the process of developing I'm going to work again with my co-author Michael part of we agree that we'll work together in developing it as we did our first book because we had such a successful successful process working this out and doing the things that we've done to create the book so we enjoyed the process and it's been beneficial to both of us and it's rewarded us us handsomely so we're going to do that again but it's going to take a lot of data Gathering and understanding and trying to pull together things that I think will be beneficial in including in a book that I really don't know if there's anything out there in the marketplace that's specifically addresses that subject relative to our profession I haven't run across anything like that and it sounds like an absolutely wonderful asset it's going to be another a great contribution to the library of business of architecture so last week we did talk a little bit about time management and I was impressed Steve to be honest uh the first time I talked to you normally I do these video interviews I record them with with Skype and we put them on YouTube so people can see the video as well and you just explained that you know what that's a newer technology uh you expressed how your time is valuable to you and you didn't necessarily see the time value in learning a new technology and I thought that's a very interesting philosophy about how you personally approach your time can you tell me a little bit about how you do that what suggestions do you have for managing time more efficiently and maybe some insight to how you personally have decided to manage your time and make priorities sure I think the last week when we talked about this in some respects um I touched on the area of understanding how to best to utilize a person's time in the sense of giving them the information they need clarifying for them what they need to know about their actual day-to-day work in other words what are you going to do now how are you going to not what in other words excuse me what are you going to do not how you're going to do what you're going to do but what are you going to do and what are the results that are expected for what you do how would you properly and effective function within that role that you're particularly working on in that particular time I refer to small firms who have less of the kind of luxury of having one thing to do one project to work on and not being able to keep themselves focused on a single Target whereas in small firms you have to do a myriad number of things the owners themselves the principles themselves wear a multitude of hats because of the size of the firm there's a lot to be done in running such the running of such an operation and so clarify each of the positions and what's expected of them the description of that position the description of each role and its responsibilities then specific to the project what is the project goal what are the fee budgets what are the outcomes that we're striving for what are the scheduling limitations that we have all those things become a part of it the best way you can do that is to understand what is expected of you then just focus on doing that and only do which is expected of you and that which only you can do if you have the luxury of being able to de delate to someone else which in small firms there's precious little time for or the ability to do that then it's best to go ahead and delegate I did refer to stepen Cy's book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and is outline of what is best way his best way to delegate and from his perspective there's only two methods on how to properly delegate to effective delegate so that it's carried out and it's done in an effective and efficient way yes in C's book The Seven Habits of of highly effective people there are two forms of Delegation and what are those two forms of Delegation well as I mentioned last week one's called stewardship delegation which is an environment in which you delegate to somebody the right person the absolute best optimal person to do that job that's available to do that job and then give them all the information they need to succeed to carry out what's expected of them to accomplish the task at the best possible level as efficiently as they and effectively as they possibly can give them everything support information resources everything that's needed the other one is gopher delegation which says I'm going to give you this to do and then when you're done come back and ask me what to do next now you can do this now you can do this now you can go do this now do this that's a waste of time that's inefficient and it's very expensive method of operating and yet it happens because some people just don't properly understand the art of Delegation it truly is an art so cvy explains all of that and he does a great job of doing that so nothing that I could ever say about it could ever be improved upon from his perspective in my opinion for that we can always refer people to Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and that's a very easy to get a hold of unlike your book financial management for design professionals yep so Steve this is the moment that everyone has been waiting for financial management for designed professionals we're going to talk about some of the key things that firm owners or principles or people who are thinking about starting their own firms can do to increase their profitability and make the most of the existing money that's already coming into their firm so let's get down to the basics how should a new firm owner or anyone for that matter let's talk about Computing the hourly rate this is a question that many Architects uh new Architects have especially people starting their firm how does an architect should an architect go about figuring out what they're worth how do they figure out how much to charge for their time okay well it's part of a linear process so it's not just something that stands alone it requires information that a firm may or may not have some of this information is readily available some may not be because of the way the firm's accounting system gathers and stores information it might depend on the way your financial management system is set up or the way your chart of accounts is organized or how the profit loss statement is formatted so some of these terms may not some of these items may not be readily available there are are five components that are part of an hourly billing rate the first one is the hourly labor rate the second one is the payroll benefit expenses the third is the general and administrative expenses the fourth is the break even rate and the fifth is the profit Target these are the five components that you'll need to identify understand and know how to apply them to develop an hourly billing rate the first component relates to the cost of an employees hourly labor based on their annual salary for example if you pay the employee an annual salary of $50,000 that calculates to an hourly rate of $244 so that's the hourly labor cost for that employee and for the sake of calculating the hourly labor rate the labor cost is represented as a multiple of 1.0 the second component relates to the cost of a firm's payroll benefit expenses which includes the firm's mandat and customary payroll deductions as a percentage of direct labor these expenses include FICA which is social security Fuda which is a uh federal unemployment tax and suda which is the the state unemployment tax workers compensation and other non-discretionary benefits like major medical insurance these expenses are represented as a multiple of direct labor somewhere in the3 to35 range the third component relates to a firm's net overate overhead expense costs this will include all of the indirect expenses again is a multiple of direct labor somewhere in the 090 to 0.115 range I'm sorry 1.15 range to determine the firm's total overhead expense rate you add the multiples for the mandatory and customary payroll benefit expenses and the net overhead expenses this this total will be in the range of 1.20 which is taking the3 and the adding it to the 0.90 or up to 1.50 which will be taking the. 35 and adding it to the 1.15 as a multiple of direct labor some firms have a higher over rate higher overhead rate and some firms have a lower overhead rate depending on how well they manage their overhead expenses if you don't know how to properly calculate these components you can't possibly do this exercise and if you don't have the right information to calculate these components you're going to get Mis misleading information which could lead to problems all right if you add the first three multiples together you would have 1.0 for the labor rate 35 for the payroll benefit expenses and 1.20 for the net overhead expenses this will equal a total of 1.55 as the overhead rate adding to the overhead rate and the labor rate equals a total of 2.55 so you take the 1.55 and you just add the labor rate of 1.0 and you get 2.55 which is the break even rate yes now that break even rate tells you that this is the cost for every dollar you spend in salary for an employee was it's going to cost me $2.55 just to have them be here and pay them a dollar of salary every hour so obviously to make a profit you have to make more than a multiple of 2.55 right yep okay well the next step is to calculate how much profit each hourly billing rate will include you can actually control the amount of profit that is included in the fee at the start of any project and this is something that some of my colleagues are just not aware of and they have absolute that they do have absolute control over in the negotiation of a project fee now this does not ensure that the amount of profit will have been made at the completion of the project it's just the targeted amount when they begin the project and set their fees because they can Target a percentage of profit that gets built into to the billing rate for each hour that helps to establish a project fee budget in my opinion I believe that anything less than a 20% profit is unacceptable we've all spent too many years and dollars on our professional education in becoming experienced and learning what we had to do to get to that place where we are and not make at least a 20% profit for our work that's a reasonable return on our investment in our firms so anybody can make so anybody that makes less than 20% I say you can improve upon that performance there's room for improvement there are some firms that will make a lot more than 20% but the preponderance of firms don't make anywhere near that that's a wellestablished statistic ing to to the professional surveys and generally what kind of profit uh do architecture firms make well you can't say that I can only tell you that surveys over the years have continued to show an improvement that has a lot to do with the new technologies that have made things much more efficient and effective in doing the things that need to be done yep so through technology the overhead rate has which used to be higher if a firm had a total overhead rate of 1.50 to 1.75 then it was in the range of being where it needed to be to be able to be competitive in the marketplace and make a profit but now the overhead rate has dropped down to somewhere between 1.20 and 1.50 I think that it's even lower than 1.20 for some firms some firms have a lower overhead which increases their profit some firms are better managers of their overhead expenses and that's the key to this thing so I say 20% is what you really need to have is a targeted profit margin now here's what happens this is the interesting thing that's not known by so many of my colleagues except those that have gone to my workshop or have read the book and that is you don't develop a profit of 20% by taking your 2.55 Break Even or your or 255 per and multiplying it by 20% that will not give you a 20% profit that will give you a billing rate that has a 20% markup built into it but it's not 20% of your billing rate it's approximately 16.67% so in order to get the billing rate to have a 20% profit you must divide the 2.55 Break Even rate by the complement of the targeted profit amount so for a target of 20% profit you would divide by you divide the 2.55 by 8 80% or 080 Have I Lost yet absolutely no just kidding I'm taking notes but I'm waiting for you to bring it home okay well I'm just using this as an example if you had a break even rate of 2.55 and you divided it by 08 which is 80% you'll come up with an answer of three 31875 yes okay that's a multiple of your billing rate yes so for every dollar of Labor you spend for the salary of an employee you need to have a billing rate that that's equal to 31875 to make a 20% profit perfect sense okay on a $10 an hour employee their billing rate would be $31.88 that would guarantee you starting out with 20% profit whereas if you just multiply the 2.55 by 20 you'll have eliminated almost 16% of the pro potential 20% profit when you do the math wrong got it yep so that's the best place to start and it's the best place to do it but you can understand that if you don't know how to develop your overhead rate none of this will work the only thing that you absolutely know without a shadow of a doubt is how much you pay your people you may be able to figure out how much you pay in payroll benefits but if you don't know that your true direct labor amount or what your true direct labor amount is then you don't know what the right multiple would be so all of these things are pieces that go into this oversized puzzle if you will if you will and that that creates this environment of a financial management system they all work to complement each other they all work to feed in onto each other and to help the next thing to become known to become developed to become a process of bringing forth the information that's needed to make some of these good business decisions excellent well let's move on let's talk about financial planning Steve okay Steve say we're looking at the year ahead so we figured out our billing rate and that makes perfect sense I get why multiplying it by 20% does not give you the full potential profit if you think about it in a kind of elementary math you're looking at it as a part of the whole so you have to divide by 80% because 80% is the part so it's interesting math though once you look at the difference the way you do it um One Way versus the other so ve very interesting so here we are we're planning for the future we have an idea of we we may maybe have some past records of how our firm is doing but what do these firms need to think about when they're looking ahead and they're making either their annual profit plan or what other planning document they should be looking at well again you're not going to have any idea what the statistical data shows and I don't even know if it exists as a statistic how many architectural or professional design firms actually do an annual budget every year and how many people even know how to do a profit plan to help build that annual budget so there's a level of missing information there's a level of not being engaged in a process that can be helpful in becoming more profitable more effective more efficient doing an annual budget is a no-brainer for me because it becomes the Baseline for how you measure your performance during the course of the year if you don't do a budget to go by you'll never know whether you're doing well or doing poorly in ret in respect to what your budget is that makes sense right yeah absolutely so as confucious said if you don't know where you're going you can only end up where you're headed to me doing an annual budget is something that you start to do at the end of the year for the next year so at the end of each year you want to start working on the budget for the next year so we're talking about an annual budget what steps go into forming an annual budget for an Architecture Firm well it has a lot to do with the firm itself as I said in the outset of my conversation last week every firm is unique so it depends on that firm how long have they been in business is it a brand new startup well if they are they have no data to go by to create a budget they have no idea it's all a guess it's going to be just a swag at the best yep most times it's going to be something that they just grabbed out of the air and it's not going to be worth very much but that's okay you have to start somewhere and it's better than not doing anything if there a firm that has some kind of a history a historical background I don't care how good or bad that is I I don't care how correct or incorrect it might be whatever their process has been it's something to build on so I suggest you start with at least the past three years of historical data about your finances for each of the past three years how did you do in each of these categories that are going to be part of this budget for me you have to begin with the thing that means the most to the firm which is the life Blood Of The Firm which is the revenue that the firm brings in each year I'm not talking about dollars received talking about Revenue earned there's a real difference between the two for the sake of my Approach for the sake of the world that I live in for the sake of the world that I do work in I say in a general way of explaining it simply accounting is the realm of dollars received and dollars paid out leaving you with a tax liability to the government either you have one or you don't have one whatever is left over is something that you're going to have to pay taxes on unless you choose to distrib distributed all before you have to pay the taxes and let someone else pay the taxes meaning you give out money to yourself and to your staff as bonuses the realm of financial management is only dealing with what you've earned this is the time you spent and it's what's created the earned revenue for your firm in financial parlament the word net operating revenue is the key term because it's those dollars that are left that your firm can spend and a certain amount of the money we're going to earn as a profit which we hope will be at least 20% after paying all salaries and all expenses and all consultants and all vendors so working on that friend end is the most important part of it okay so in that respect the net operating Revenue deals with the three basic elements that is direct labor overhead and profit those are the three things that you're going to need to know about well those components of net operating Revenue take on different forms and they are distributed differently throughout the profit loss statement essentially if you thought about it when you look at a profit loss statement you can pick these three categories up really easily they show you that in an average firm across the board the ratio between those three things looks like you spend about 30% of it on direct labor another 60% goes to paying overhead expenses so what does that leave you that leaves you with a poultry 10% as a profit so here the goal is to enhance that 10% well where do you think that's going to come from well there are two places the two things that we just talked about direct labor and overhead expenses the direct labor can be controlled by establishing a project fee budget which can be controlled by understanding what your overhead rate is then creating a billing rate that has a built- in profitability to it and a schedule that makes sense to do these kinds of things that have to be done within the scope of the the services on the contract to deliver the project from the beginning to the end and make the product what you wanted if you spend more than 30% if that's what you budgeted you're going to lose money why because you're spending more money to pay somebody to do the thing that wasn't intended it's got to come from somewhere and it comes from your profitability so if you can reduce your direct labor to less than 30% you might create a greater profitability now there's not a whole lot of wiggle room in that number the acceptable range for a total direct labor as a percentage of net operating revenue is between 28 and 32% so where's the best place to earn more profit it's in that big Hulk of money called 60% that goes for overhead expenses well I can say this if you can save a dollar of overhead expense you'll create a dollar of profit it's that simple find a way to reduce 60% and increase inre The Profit to 20% Which means you've got to get your overhead down to 50% to get a 20% profit if your direct labor stays at 30% got it so just to refresh here last time we did talk about well actually this time we just finished talking about what goes into the overhead number and some of the things were the payroll taxes workers compensation and then of course the indirect labor costs right then all of the operational cost of keeping a firm running your rent your telephone utilities rent right yeah etc etc etc well Steve if a firm is looking at their overhead rate and they want to reduce that overhead what's the lwh hanging fruit there in terms of reducing that big 60 60% number where's the first place you start when you want to turn some of that overhead into profit well you become aware of what you're spending mhm if you don't know what you're spending you can't reduce it so the first place is where I almost begin with my clients my work when I get started with a client I have one goal in mind my goal is to primarily to work with the client and help them achieve their actual goals for their firm so they'll attain the success that they perceived and have a vision for if I can accomplish that then I'll consider my efforts to be successful okay well over the last 29 years my work has encompassed the broadest range of any kind of business operations within a firm for that which relates EX for that which relates to design management and marketing strategy because I don't do either one of those things so in this process over this long 20year journey without exception I have found that my initial work will always relate to somehow identifying the opportunity financial management system for the firm and the resources that are required to get the best results from it so it almost always goes back to something to do with money and how to better control it better manage it and how to get an enhanced amount of money in the profit side of it okay so I'm a let's say I'm a I'm a firm principal and I'm looking to reduce my overhead can you give me one or two examples of where we can start well okay I'm going to start with the direct labor because even though there's not a lot of margin to attack I think it's a key place a lot of firms cannot attain this range that I suggested of 28 to 32% of net operating revenue for the direct labor the reason they don't have success in doing that is three-fold one many of them don't even know that there is such a range that they should be in two they don't know how to calculate that range because they don't have the right tools to do so and then three they don't have any kind of game plan for how to run a project called a project fee budget if they do have a project fee budget it gets set aside once the projects have started so I'm going to go back to a very basic process that has to do with understanding when you receive a request for proposal from a client they're asking you to come up up with a fee proposal well all too W all too often I have witnessed this I've experienced this in my own career that working for firms even in the large firm that I work for for 11 and a half years the fee is developed on the basis of wealth we did something like this last year or two years ago it was an in it was in this Ballpark and we did it really well so let's just make this fee this that that fee plus an increase of x% they take the easy way out they take what I call the lazy way out okay that's that's a choice that's a business decision I'm not going to be judgmental about that I don't think it's the right way to go I don't think it's in their best interest to do that but that's a decision that someone makes that's in charge the best process is to is for every single project to sit down and do a project budget that entails understanding what the scope of work is and how many kinds of tasks were involved in each piece of the scope of the work and then assigning a number of hours to accomplish those tasks then assigning an individual or individuals who are required to be involved in those tasks and what their billing rate is or basically their Break Even rate is to establish what the cost will be to deliver that project they've identified and then put the 20% on top of that or take it divide it by 80% and come up with 20% for the built-in profit that's your fee well even in those firms that may do all that that's Absolut that are absolutely pristine and deliberate and right on Target and doing all those things some of them may send that fee proposal out and never look at it again during the course of the project it doesn't become the Baseline for their operation on the project it's just a way of getting a fee so if they don't manage it well if they don't monitor it in respect to that profit that the project fee budget stated so they wind up getting uh again what they get this is the place we can save money that 28 to 32% is not some wild gu of what you ought to be at it's an efficient range if you remain in that efficient range you're going to get a project done you're going to get your targeted profitability and reduce the amount of expense you're going to to uh have as a cost there in lives a whole range of things that have to do with the understanding your employees and how they function how they operate and why I feel so strongly about this whole thing about employee retention and investing time to develop and build them up and teach them how to do things properly and give them the information they need to succeed instead of fail left to their own devices they'll do the best they can no question about it they're all professionals but they don't understand they don't understand some of the things that could be they could be doing or what they should be doing so they go off the rails and they spend money that was never intended to be spent but if they don't know what you told them if how many budgets are shared with the staff how many budgets have been given to the staff whether it's in dollars or hours you have this is your project this is your number of hours you have to complete it for us to make the profit margin that we established for this project which is 20% your job is to make this project come in at 20% these are the hours you have to management now that's a directive that's locked in stone yes it's locked in stone as a fee but at that point you haven't already discussed this you've already discussed this with your project manager who's going to manage a project and got their fee back to see if your numers realistic in terms of your estimated hours of doing a project you're already at a loss you're already at a disadvantage MH because you're doing it after the fact so it's inclusive it's a collaborative process with all of the right people involved in the decisionmaking process and then one person makes the final decision about what it needs to be yes then that person that makes the decision should be held accountable for having made that decision beneficial or not beneficial to the firm so that locks in this whole culture of accountability each person there under becomes accountable for their performance under that game plan that's been established and carrying it out and managing it and monitoring it so everybody succeeds so an architecture has a project fee budget what suggestions do you have for encouraging stewardship or a sense of ownership in terms of meeting that project fee budget well again in my world if you're living in a culture of account ability then you already know because it's been established and it's been communicated to everybody clearly openly and so everybody understands that you're going to share in the profit of this firm somehow some way some firms set up profit sharing plans my problem with profit sharing plans is not that everybody should get the same amount of money because not everybody contributes to the same level so why would the highest performer be satisfied getting the same amount of money as the lowest performer as a profit Shar or as a bonus but that's what happens so you've got to be able to let them know that this is what's going to happen in this program you contribute to this program we will evaluate your contribution we'll sit down with you and and talk to you about it and we'll come up with a reward a compensation for you because you've contributed to it if I have the ability to control my financial destiny by working more effectively more efficiently working smarter instead of harder understanding what's expected of me what's the criter I to work with I'm going to do the best possible job I can do so I can make the best possible return on my invested time it works like a stimulator a motivator if you will for those who see it as well as which they will benefit I said some people are not motivated by money okay well maybe you do such a great job you're now going to be promoted to the next level up you're no longer a project architect now you're going to be a project manager you're no longer a project manager now you're going to be a Project Director you're no longer a Project Director now you're going to be the next level up you're going to be appointed as an officer of the firm you become a principal or become a partner a junior partner I mean associate principal whatever the titles are they're incentives to doing a better job that's certainly clearly delated and explained to you in advance so you're creating an environment in which everybody wants to do the best possible job because you've answered the question what's in it for me Steve in a in a practical application how would a firm go about structuring a Compensation Plan you mentioned that it should be individual and tailored to the person and there should be a dialogue with staff members to see what their hot buttons are so you can know what incentives they want how do you translate that into the process of then deciding who gets more who gets less the so-called profit shares okay I want to make a distinction right now you know in my opinion my way of thinking and seeing is that performing reviews do not automatically lead to salary increases or for ass sizable bonus or advancement yes there's simply a way of letting you know how you did in the last 12 months relative to the goals you set in these last 12 months and what are going to be the new goals we're going to set for the next 12 months so you can do as well or better than you did for the past 12 months once you have this performance review the answer from those things will be a contribution to the decision-making process about how this decision is made about who gets what and how much it isn't necessarily discussed with the individual now you're going to get 15% or you're going to get x% that's not discussed in a performance review it has no place in a performance review it could come from a discussion after the fact once the decision was made to sit down and explain it to them this is the outcome of your performance in the last year we're going to do a distribution of profits through bonuses there are going to be performance bonuses and as you know that's our policy we do performance bonuses so your performance bonus has been rated as such which means that you're going to be in the upper x% of the staff entitling you to based on your salary a percentage of bonus equal to x amount of dollars and the same thing through the same thing goes through for the salary so it's policy it's formula it's an absolute established methodology for coming up with this it's decided by the key people in The Firm and then maybe some of the key staff members as well as principles not just the principles excellent It's been a very good conversation Steve well thanks do you have anything that you felt like you wanted to add to the conversation before we finish up something that maybe we didn't hit on as much as you would like or another topic that you feel is important I I'll tell you what I'd like to say I would hope that my comments are not taken as criticism of my colleagues I I don't criticize my colleagues and I don't judge my colleagues I'm just aware of the things that I would like for them to learn and to know that would be beneficial to me it's what my Consulting practice is all about it's what my focus is I come to my business with a servant's heart to do what it takes to help my clients succeed and achieve the successes for their firm but I'm never going to tell a client something they want to hear I'm only going to tell them what they need to know what they do with that information is up to them and I'll accept their answer and I'll accept their decision I'm not being critical in any way I'm just simply so passionate about the reasons why we as a profession should be doing so much better than we are it has to do with the education about the things we're engaged in or in the things that we need to be engaged in that we're not engaged in because we don't know any better Steve if people want to find out more about how you work and how to get a hold of you where should they go well that's an interesting question I'm in the process of creating a brand new website because my website is 15 years old and it's woefully out of date a lot of information about me is out of date even the contact information is out of date because I moved six months ago to the Austin area so if in your posting of this you might be able to include my information I'm willing to have you do that it's just fine with me okay I'll do that I I think you have that information and we can talk about this after the fact to make sure that you have the right information about a go but I'm delighted to hear from anybody that has comments or a critique of these things or has an alternate proo approach to the things that I've discussed I'm wide open I'm flexible I'm listening to whatever they have to say and I'm just delighted to be able to engage in a conversation about these subjects because it's my passion well I can tell Steve thanks for spreading this this knowledge and spreading this information your vast experience is very clear and you present it in a very succinct manner well thanks that's very kind of you Steve thank you for being on the business of architecture and that's a wrap for another show about the business of architecture to get more resources about how you as an architect can raise your fees land the projects you love to work on and get the time in your dayback join the members only business of architecture Insider list for free by by going to business of architecture.com sfree enter your best email address there and I will send you instant access to free resources including my book social media for Architects if you'd like to discuss a thought or Insight from today's show visit business of architecture.com SLP podcast on that page you'll also find my notes from today's show and the action items I took away from our conversation until next week keep rocking and go conquer the world everybody knows that you just got to do it [Music] anyway the views expressed on the show by my guests do not represent those of the host and I make no representation promise guarantee Pledge warranty contract Bond or commitment except to help Architects conquer the world bump music credit to benfolds 5 do it anyway and that's a wrap