Hello everybody, thank you for joining us today. Really excited to launch off this brand new series of insight sessions specifically for the AEC space. Most of you won't have met me before, so it's a pleasure to have you all on board. My name is Ben Edwards, I'm a VP here at CMap based in the wonderful Florida Orlando office.

So nice and sunny here today. And really excited to bring you, as I mentioned, the first of our AEC focused insight sessions that we're going be ramping up over the course of the next few quarters and years. Really what's prompted this for me was I attended an AIA event in Washington, DC a month or so ago. And it was focused on how to drive the business in the AEC space.

So things like profitability, exits and valuations, improving your operations, and there were some startling stats and figures that were presented around the market share that the boutiques SMBs weren't capturing and the margins that firms weren't generating, and some of the practices around pricing and delivery that led to. Owners, operators of SMB firms feeling pressured. I thought, well, we need to be doing something about this.

We need to be helping the community out. We need to be bringing great insights from experts to our audiences, which has prompted this. And we're delighted to be joined today by Shawn Mulligan, who will be giving an intro very shortly.

So don't run, Shawn. We're not gonna start too quickly, but you will see Shawn on screen with me here. And we run these sessions in a couple of different verticals that CMap operates in. So I'm more regularly the host of the Consulting Pulse, which is a podcast for management consultants, digital AI, transformation, ecology environment consultancies, consultancies in the built environment too. And we've been doing these types of sessions.

Thought leadership insight sessions around a particular topic for over three years, built up like really good audiences, really good engagement. So we thought we need to bring this to the architecture and engineering space, which is also why we're here today.

So I'm really excited to get into this topic. We've called it the Art and the Science, so how top performing architects balance creative freedom with disciplined operations in 2027. And we've broken it down into five key topic areas that Shawn and I will spend about 10 minutes on each.

First off, we're going to do some scene setting. So getting an understanding of the art versus the science in the architect engineering space. Then we're going to be looking second at the creativity and discipline that aren't competing, but they're actually two priorities and how to do that as somebody running the business.

The third thing is around protecting the margin without squeezing the design time, the creativity, the things that make you known and loved in your markets. Fourth, we're gonna be looking at where is sustainable growth coming from. And this was critical for me because that AIA conference that I went to highlighted the trend that illustrates that SMBs aren't winning as much work as the bigger firms.

And what can we do to help reverse that so that top line revenue, margin, turns back around, maybe after a choppy couple of years. Fifth is about managing you and your team. So some really practical advice about how to implement some of the best practice that we're talking about, and then which measures are key.

Some firms I work with maybe have gone overboard on all of the KPIs and reporting, some underestimate the amount of things that are important. So let's get in that goldilocks zone. What are some of the crucial things that we know firms should be tracking and aren't just going to add another reporting layer of bottleneck a headache?

So great, let's get into it. Shawn, can you share with us a intro? That would be a perfect way to start, and then we'd get into the questions.

Yeah, Ben, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited about this conversation. So for anybody who doesn't know me that's on here, I'm Shawn Mulligan. I'm the founding principal of Design Clarity. We are a strategic consulting and architectural design firm in Charlottesville, Virginia.

So I'm a licensed architect. I have over 25 years experience from working in firms from OMA to doing furniture design, high-end residential, historic preservation, net zero energy schools. Wide variety of sectors in the US and abroad. But today at Design Clarity, I do three things: strategic consulting, executive coaching, and architectural design.

And most of my clients are either small and medium businesses or nonprofit leaders that are trying to figure out what's getting in the way of their team achieving the results and does helping them design a way through their challenge and to their goals and destinations. For the AIA, I'm a kind of a serial nonprofit volunteer. And I currently represent Virginia on the AIA strategic council.

I was just named a chair of one of the study groups. So I'm one of the leaders of the strategic council, which is kind of the think tank for the profession of architecture. And so last year my group studied and researched the future of the business of practice. We interviewed you know, over 24 leaders across 22 companies around the world, innovative architecture AEC businesses and AEC related.

And this year I'm chairing the procurement study group. I also run and built a program called Leaders in Architecture and Business, or Lab, which is the first of its kind, state level statewide business management training for mid-career architects making the transition from employee to owner.

Quite a period of time for you, then Shawn. Doesn't sound like you. I appreciate you fitting us into your busy schedule and what a fantastic intro. I've posted your LinkedIn profile into the chat so that people can connect with you. I definitely recommend people do that.

Shawn and I met at AIA, which is what's prompted this conversation because we both had a mutual love for making sure that firms continue to do the fantastic creative.

Yeah. Happ so happy to be here.

Community centric work that we know SMBs do also are building a business that yeah that they can hand over, that they can build, that they can grow, that they can sell, that the that delivers what they need on a personal and professional level. And as somebody myself who works right across the spectrum of different professional services verticals, I always feel like architects and engineers don't get the same.

Margins, don't get often the same growth, don't get some of the same exit opportunities because not at all because of the work they're doing. The work they're doing is actually probably some of the most important in the professional services space and broader.

And so yeah, this is really what's sparked this conversation, and that chance meeting, but I'm glad it happened.

Yeah. Yeah, me too, Ben. I mean, because I'm at like you, I see architects as wildly productive members of the professional class. Architects are such incredible collaborative creative problem solvers.

They work across multiple disciplines, navigating the needs of clients, the rules and regulations of jurisdictions, the complexities of kind of building art and science, the con constantly changing craft of how to make things happen in the world, while creating beautiful spaces that people want to be in that make their lives better, that make you know, their communities stronger, while benefiting the ecology and the sustainability, you know, of the building themselves and kind of reaching these bigger and aspirational goals while trying to do it.

On time and on budget, you know, when they're not in control of who's actually constructing it and who's putting it together. It's a really hard way to make a living. It's very difficult. And when you pair creativity and perfectionism, which most architects are kind of creative perfectionists, it's a dangerous cocktail.

And so I think that is probably one of the reasons why the business end doesn't get so much attention because it's such a complicated, difficult job. It requires a kind of a monomon. Focus on being really good, serving your clients, understanding, and finding that way to innovate in the situation.

The challenge for me is, as you know, if businesses aren't well run and if they're not thinking ahead about what their growth strategies are, how to gain new markets, how to build a pipeline so that they're not constantly either chasing projects they shouldn't win or choosing to work with people that aren't really their ideal clients and that don't.

Help them grow and do their best possible work to create the best outcome, then they end up in situations where they're kind of chasing their tails, you know, especially if you're driving to the bottom on fees. If your only solution is we'll cut the fees to get the job, then you're always in a scarcity mindset. And that scarcity mindset creates really negative cultural problems. Behavioral issues, kind of internal kind of feelings.

But I think, you know, if architects had the kind of business and entrepreneurial education that other in creative industries have, we could be exemplars of what it is to lead, run, and grow businesses. And so I'm really working to help architects and firms get that understanding because I ultimately I think the future of architecture is going to belong to the firms. That design their businesses as well as they design their buildings.

Like that. That's a nice strap line as well, by the way. And I think the art and the science is never more true than in this particular niche in the professional services space because of the output being such high levels of artisticness, creativity.

So that and but pairing it with the science is where the critical piece comes in. And from my observations, I think about things like the downtrend in the overall percentage of work. Is won by the SMBs compared to the bigger firms in what is also a flat to maybe slightly declining overall market opportunity.

I look at things like AI and technology and how that could potentially impact architects' clients' perceptions of value, and maybe that could potentially have an impact at some point. We're not seeing it now, but I'm always thinking like what. What's gonna happen? And I see it in other professional services verticals, so I'm trying to figure out what's gonna happen next. Like what are you observing at a very high level to start?

Because we mentioned we're gonna break this whole session down into five or six areas, but just a scene set. That balance between art and science, is it shifting and if it isn't, what's draw why is it not? What's driving this?

Yeah, so I think the art has always been a part of architecture and will always be a part of architecture, the creative impulse to craft creative, elegant, beautiful solutions to the building problems in front of us. The science of both the technical production, the complexity and the changing nature of building as we ramp up our sustainability goals and sustainability outcomes that we're targeting.

Is really changing a way that you think not just about the building and the building envelope, but also the systems inside of it. You know, I spent a number of years designing net zero energy K-12 schools at VMDO Architects.

That the marriage of the lighting systems, the plumbing systems, the, you know, getting gas out of your buildings and electrifying all of the cooking equipment and the heating equipment and using things like geothermal and finding these blends between engineering and architecture.

Fenestration and daylight, you know, solar gain and heat gain and the kind of change of the building throughout the years or the days, the weeks, the seasons, to make sure that the building is performing as technologically well as possible, you know, towards your sustainability goals, is a huge aspect of the profession and the challenge of the technology.

So that's like one aspect of the science is sort of the building science that architects have to stay on top of. But on top of that are the economic trends you're talking about, right? Like the ABI has been declining, though which is the architecture billing index, it's been declining for I think 22 straight months. Or no, sorry, it's since 2022.

So it's like 56 months, right? It's a long time, more than a couple of years. And that means month over month, architects are billing less every month, right? And as you, you and I saw at the firm management symposium. You know, larger firms have simultaneously been acquiring smaller, small and medium-sized firms, right? To get geographic distribution or new expertise or new kind of market penetration.

And as they've done that, those firms are still kind of now as part of this larger firm winning the work in their local market. So these larger firms are simultaneously winning more of this kind of small, medium-sized work, and they're also pursuing smaller projects to give these larger. Teams that they're building more work to do.

And so there's more competition between small and medium-sized firms and the large firms, which is really putting pressure, especially in the middle. You know, the kind of 50 to 150 member firms are really seeing a compressed market where typically they were able to kind of punch above their weight and take, take big swings, establish a reputation of quality and quality delivery and customer service in an area.

And win the work based on their reputation and their kind of business development. And now that's getting a little bit disrupted. I think firms that have strong local presence and they're still doing it are doing well. But you can definitely see a change in those trends.

So in the meantime, all that's happening. We have like, you know, the largest transfer of intergenerational wealth, the largest transfer of firm ownership happening at the same time, and we have wildly unpredictable. Kind of political climate, right? We've got tariffs coming on and off. We've got kind of trade wars starting with our neighbors to the north and south.

And those relationships, especially Canada, like there's a huge amount of lumber that comes from Canada, lots of wood windows that come from Canada. You know, there's a lot of things that are manufactured in our nearby neighbors and then in other countries.

And so if you start playing around and creating uncertainty, it slows people's appetite for thinking about they're thinking about new projects. They're at they're making it the same level of inquiries, even increased inquiries, but they're not signing contracts and they're not getting started.

So all those things are happening now. And I think it's one of the reasons why if I talk to especially larger firm leaders, there's a bit of a hesitancy before the November 2nd election. There was a kind of uncertainty. I'm interested to see how kind of having a little bit of political clarity in the US might start to get people rolling.

There was a there was a bit of a wait before this November election. So I'm curious to see where that goes. I mean, the other thing is you've looked at the market data, right? That like if you take AI and data centers out of architecture, the construction industry or the design industry, architecture and construction are in a recession, right?

Like they are underpinning a significant portion of the AEC activity in the United States. And so that's a question mark to me, right? How what how long the tail is on that industry? Is it a growth sector? Is it gonna slow? Is it gonna change? And if there are any impacts to it, how does that impact the broader, you know, AEC economy and the broader economy writ large?

When I pair some of the data that's around total adjustable market, win rate of SMBs versus larger firms, and then the trajectory of some of the verticals that you could be winning in, it doesn't paint the best picture for SMBs because actually some of the markets that have got an upturn, data center one, we're not winning many of those opportunities anyway.

The other thing that I think that was really interesting you mentioned is firm with between 50 and 150 staff. Like when I look at the S curves, I.e. The plateau growth, plateau that a professional services firm goes through, that's on like the fourth stage, you've got naught to 10 staff, 10 to 25, 25 to 50, and then that section, and then there's a couple more S curves beyond that.

I'm always really interested in the prior two segments. Those firms that are going through an S curve between 10 to 25 staff. 25 to fifty staff because if I think about this webinar's subject, I.e. Sci the art versus the science, it's where the science becomes really important. And I'm wondering, have you identified anything in either of those two groups that yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So I, you know, I'm gonna there's I've got a two-part answer. One of them is if you're a creative person and you have an idea about something that should exist in the world or that can make your work easier or better, there's never been a better time to be alive because we have technology that can get you from concept or idea to reality super fast, right?

AI is allowing people to take their vision and turn it into. Usable, actionable product. Whether it's something you'd want to say, like take to enterprise scale, is a question, right? But you can get a working thing that will work for you and either process vast amounts of data and give you insight or help you streamline a repetitive work.

Make sure that the people that are doing work are doing work that is kind of their highest and best use, not just work that they always used to do. Right. So we there is this technological aspect where I think there is a potential to get some real time savings, cost savings. And I'm seeing firms deploy systems that start to systematize some of those things.

But the downside of that is that I think AI is also acting as a bit of a like a bit of a pincer move. So where our clients are potentially using the technology to cut us out of the system. Other industries might use the technology to try to take our market share, right? Just sort of do some of their own design work using AI.

And in I think in all cases, it's starting to raise the expectations that everything should go faster, that things should take less time. The challenge is, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, the time in the process. Isn't just drawing a set of drawings. It's actually evaluating and understanding the problem.

And so I think part of the challenge for architects is that liability for the outcome of the project isn't changing, but the expectation and the desire for speed is. And that's gonna put us into a bit of a squeeze play.

So I don't know if that answers your question, but those are two different ways of thinking about like technology as a real help to help. Small, medium sized businesses like scale up and improve their operations.

And then a ways that it's changing expectations and that's going to start to modify our behaviors if we're not really clear about the value proposition that sometimes going fast isn't the right answer, you know, for us or for the clients.

Right, particularly in a world where engagements can run multi year. You know, we're not talking about something that gets delivered, a the end product that everybody involved in the built environment is working towards quickly.

Admittedly there might be phasing where you're only involved for a short period of time, but the overall picture is of a longer term piece and therefore how does speed play a part I think is a really interesting dynamic. I've just put one of our first three polls up for everybody around this initial starting point around art versus science. Like where does your firm lean today?

You might have a data-specific answer, you might have a gut feel answer, maybe that's revealing in itself. But there's four options for you to respond on. So in your business, are you mostly art? You're doing great work, but the business side feels a little bit chaotic, or the opposite: are you mostly science, really well run? Creativity can feel a little bit squeezed. Are you genuinely balanced? If so, perfect.

Lovely to hear that. And then the fourth is it depends on the week.

You know, I will say, and I don't know if you mentioned this or not, but I was talking with Carol Wedge, who's the new executive vice president of AIA National. She's fantastic. And she came up to me after the session and the her intro kickoff to the AIA firm management symposium. And she said, Can you believe that this is the first firm management symposium AIA National has ever had?

And I may have said an expletive that I thought, you know, but I just it is crazy to me that the largest design organization in the world that's been around since 1897 has never had a symposium where it brings together small and medium-sized businesses and says, How can we help you run your business better? Right.

And so you're asking about the art and the science. Like it's not. If you throw a rock in a room of architects, you will always hit a an architect who cares about design, but you will rarely hit one that cares about the science of business, right? Who cares about business and management as much as I think somebody has to in these firms.

And so what I'm excited is between the LAB program, between the work I've been doing on the strategic council and the things that I see AIA National doing in both their business academy, the firm management symposium, I see a real trend and change in the industry. Of people raising their hand and saying, I care about this issue. I want to learn about it.

I need the tools and I want the industry to help me. And so there's for the first time in my professional life as an architect, there is a passion and an energy and excitement about business and management.

So on the poll, really interesting response. Only 17% of our audience say that they have got or work in a firm that feels genuinely balanced. So whichever way you're leaning, whether it be mo mostly art or mostly science, it's showing that we've got like some interesting opportunities that present themselves in front of us. What just a quick anecdote on something you mentioned.

So when you mentioned about finding people that genuinely care about the business. When I compare the work I do with architects and engineers to the work I do with other types of professional services firms, let's say like a management consultancy, a digital and AI transformation consultancy, quite often they have got an embedded operator. They hire a COO, one of their managing partners, I.e.

A principal in the architect space, has got an operations hat that they firmly wear. The amount of architects I speak to where somebody who's a brilliant designer, creative, spotted opportunity within the business to help the business run more efficiently and literally has written their own job title and created a role. So it you know

Yeah, I

It just sh and this is at the smaller end. I appreciate once you get to like fifty, a hundred staff you probably will have somebody like

Yeah, I think it's interesting. I've worked as a recruiter for every firm I've ever worked with. And one of the things that's always fascinated me about that role and architects' desires around recruiting is that they're always looking for multi-tools. They always want someone who can be dynamic and creative and lead a team and win work. And be a manager and understand business and manage the finances.

And I, you know, my response to firm leaders is was always like sometimes you just need a hammer, you know, sometimes you just need a screwdriver. Like sometimes the tool should just be the tool. And I and my argument to architects and pretty much any business owner is like if you need a director of marketing, they probably shouldn't be an architect.

They should be somebody who has a marketing and development background, right? If you need a if you it's time to get your finances in order and to really make sure that your business model is as sound as possible, you should have somebody with an MBA, you know, you should have a CFO or a COO. And they don't have to be an architect to manage and run an architecture firm.

You know, I just helped AIA Virginia. I'm a chair of the education committee for AIA Virginia. We organize the state conference and I got Todd Sigity to come and be our keynote speaker and SHoP Architects is one of the most innovative creative architecture firms in the world, and they their leadership team is not all architects. You know, Todd is their chief business officer, and his background is in law and international development.

You know, it's you don't have to be an architect to run an architecture firm. And in a lot of ways, architects don't necessarily make the best business people unless they're really inclined to do it. So I think. I personally I think, you know, I work with other kind of tech businesses, kind of small and medium you know, tech companies.

And I find that their solutions sometimes give us they use fractional leadership, CFOs, CTOs, CMOs to make sure that their teams are coordinated and that the leadership opportunities are all there and that they've got all they need to achieve the goals that they're after.

You were nicely segueing into the second part of the conversation, which is around How creativity and discipline might not be two distinct approaches. You and sometimes you need a hammer rather than trying to find somebody who can fulfill every single role.

So, in your experience, what does best in class look like? You've seen firms going through these different growth stages and they're trying to find this intricate balance between obsessing over the how they price the work, how they deliver the work, how they grow the business, the operations, versus those that like are winning awards, they're dominating their market, they're taking share off the big firms because of the actual design execution.

Give us a sense of like a business that has cracked it and got that balance.

Yeah. So I thought of a there's a firm in Virginia that I will brag on any chance I get. They're called Work Program Architects. Mel Price and Tom White are the founding principals, and they have grown and have just this year start launched their second office. And they have built something that is Mel gave the keynote speech. Actually, you probably saw her at the firm management symposium.

She talked about their business model, right? The way their firm is built. So they were built from the beginning on this idea of kind of radical transparency that they are fully open book.

They when they make key decisions, which projects to go after, what clients to work with, how to set pay scales, how to grow and change and develop, like those decisions, what is the big mission vision, like strategic plan for the firm? All those decisions are made collectively. And they can do it at their size. They're a you know kind of medium, medium, large sized firm.

But what it's created is a kind of an engagement and buy-in from staff at all levels. You know, they've transitioned to there's they've got, you know, a kind of an ownership model, which basically they are giving people the information to think and act like owners, and then they're giving them the rewards of performing like owners.

And so that one change of being much more transparent, getting people. Behind the curtain, showing them how the business works and why it works the way it works. Giving them the information they need to make the good decisions that you need them to make, whether you're there or not, is and empowering them with leadership opportunities, opportunities to grow and change is really vital.

Like if you want people to act like owners, you need to treat them like owners, right? The second thing is the businesses that I see winning design awards and also having the capacity to do all the extra stuff that it takes to do that. They have built outstanding businesses. And generally, they think about their businesses like entrepreneurs.

So entrepreneurship is it's a discipline, right? It's a discipline of study. It's not a skill that anybody was born with, right? Being a great business person, you didn't come out of the womb. It's skills that you can learn.

But over and over, the folks that I interview or that I work with, the folks that I interviewed for the strategic council, people, firms that I work with, firms that I know, they have these kind of four habits. They tend to learn a lot. They're very curious. They're always learning. And generally learning from outside of architecture, right? They're getting connected to groups. They're talking to folks like you, right?

They're talking to people outside of the trad traditional box of architecture to understand how other businesses make money, find clients, develop durable relationships. They tend to make sure, as we were talking about last time, about building the right team, getting the right people on the bus, getting them in the right seats.

Making sure that they have everything they need to be excellent and making sure that you know, you don't have to fill every role with the same people. You need different types of people for different types of roles. And then they really work on their business like it's a project. They're constantly experimenting, they're constantly innovating, they're iterating, they're playing around.

They think about it as something, as a thing to be excited about, not a thing to begrudgingly do. And that changes their energy towards it. And finally, they make time and energy to invest in what's next.

You know, so if they don't know something, if they need to grow into a new area, if they're thinking about extending into a new market, they try to figure out ways to either explore it within their current system, giving their people time and space to do those explorations, or to get paid to explore and learn about, you know, those industries.

So that kind of set of habits and that entrepreneurial mindset, I find when you pair it with creativity and a client service mindset is unstoppable.

It's great example that you referenced at the top. And I was present when that presentation from Mel was given. What was really interesting for me was the questions that I got for the rest of the couple of days afterwards were like, How can we do that? Because most businesses aren't starting from scratch today and can then build into that like she did.

They have to pivot a little bit on like established working practices. They probably have some change management around how they comp people. How transparent they are around their books.

But there was lessons in there, even if you can't start from scratch and d and replicate exactly what they're doing and you maybe feel like some of that's extreme like some of the financial literacy, some of the operating cadences any firm can put into practice without needing to go to the more radical, transparent lengths. And I feel like there's the ski Right.

It's a spectrum. You know, it's a spectrum, but I will simply say be more transparent. Give people more information and empower them to make change, right? Those are the things at the kernel, at the core of what they're doing is they're providing people the information they need to make decisions and they're treating them like leaders. And people step into the role. That you tell them they should step into.

You know what I mean? Like if you open a door and you say, Hey, I think you should go over here and you're going to be rewarded when you do, most ambitious people will go through the door. The challenge is if you don't give them those opportunities to grow inside your organization, they will be the answer to somebody else's problem, right?

Somebody else will give them the opportunity to grow out there in their place, you know? And so I think not only has it created a level of engagement, right, for WPA and other firms that I've surveyed, interviewed, or worked with, I think it also it makes them want to be a part of it. It makes them want because it's theirs. It's collective ownership, right?

One th and I'd love your perspective on this, the one thing I wish every architect had a completely transparent and clear perspective on was the value of their time because I think it's underestimated broad speaking across the market.

And I think those entering of competitions for free, giving away IP, the doing things side of desk, well intentioned or not, the acceptance of clients pushing back with scope creep pieces, like as soon as you actually see the dollar signs relating to that, I it's a it's an eye opening moment where you start because you've got an internal perception of how you value yourself, you've got the company's perception, which is how much they're giving you in salary or bonuses or whatever, and then you've got the reality of like what it was that was delivered to the client.

And that is where you can start as a business improving your margin. But what's your take?

Yeah. So I we could have a whole conversation about time, about how architects under and I think architects are trained from the university to undervalue their time and to undervalue their health and their well-being. Right. This industry glorifies people who work all night, who are always at their desks, who are always working.

But the reality, science will tell you that you are not productive if you work. 10 to 12 hours, right? Straight and you don't stop. You have to stop and walk away a little bit. Give yourself a time to react, especially for creative work. We solve creative problems in downtime, in between times when we're taking walks.

So it's why people everybody says, I was in the shower and I was thinking about dot, dot, dot. Because our body is busy doing one thing and our mind says, I'm gonna go check the shelves for all the things that we left over, right? If you want to do creative work, you have to create a sense of safety and security, right?

So people aren't in fight or flight mode. They're not in survival mode. So they can access security mode, right? So that means predictability of pay, of performance, of all of those things. That means not compromising on their time. And that means allowing people to be true to their word. The problem is, is if you tell someone late Thursday that they're gonna have to stay late Thursday and tomorrow.

To finish up this deadline because you didn't manage the process well, well, they're gonna let somebody down. It might be their kids, it might be their girlfriend, it might be their boyfriend, somebody out there is counting on them to show up and do a thing with them. And nobody likes that feeling, right?

And so that's one way we devalue our time. But the question of RFP responses, competitions, doing free work, right? And giving it away. I would often say to firms that I've worked at that, like we could buy a car or a couple people. For the cost of what it's going to take to go after this job. Is it worth it?

You know, would you rather have one more person to help us get through the workload? Or do we really wanna spend, you know, effectively what it costs to buy a car to have a one in five shot and winning this job? Right.

So architects are often waiting for RFPs, waiting for these opportunities to spend a tremendous amount of time, energy, money, and creativity to give work away for free for a one in five shot to win a job.

As opposed to investing in the thing that's much more likely to get you jobs, which is the durable relationships you have, shaking the tree of your kind of current projects, showing up and doing a better job and making sure that your clients know what you're doing for them and that you value them and they value you. Getting paid for the work that you do.

And if somebody asks for something to go beyond the scope that you've agreed to, say, yeah, I'd love to help you with that. And here's what it costs. Right. I was always taught that the answer is in client services, yes and. Yes, I'd love to help you. And here's what it's going to cost, and this is what it's going to add in terms of time.

Because architects don't talk about time enough, right? It's not just going to take some money to do it, it's also going to slow the process down. If we're making a big change in schematic design, it's not as big a thing, right? You can kind of absorb it maybe.

But if you're making it in construction documents, it's a big deal. We're going to have to, we're not going to hit that deadline. It's gonna shift. Contractors are better at that, right? Change orders always have time and money, right? It's gonna cost you something, it's gonna add a couple of weeks to the project.

Architects need to take, take a cue from our building partners and make sure we're talking about and valuing our time and our money. Yeah.

I wanted to ask another question. I've got to quickly slide one in because you approached a really interesting what I hope is an interesting question. We'll find out. Do you think any of this is part of the reason why the bigger firms are winning way more of the work than they previously were? Because they've operationalised, because they've right.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. They have a business development, they have business development professionals that have been establishing relationships long term. They are tracking, they know who their ICPs are, right? They know who their ideal customers are. They know what their offering schedule is. They know have already built relationships with the people that are decision makers or the next generation of decision makers. They've been doing it for years. They have professionals.

Who are architects, who are engineers, who are collaborators, who are partners that are pushing and feeding work to them, they have an ecosystem of information and of sharing and giving, right? They understand that the more I give to my collaborators, the more I give to the people that help me grow, the more I can grow, right? The more that'll help me.

And so they operationalize and they professionalize business development. And if there was one thing that architects could really focus on, it's sales. And business development, building better relationships, staying in touch with actually analyzing, like I analyze all of my jobs and where they came from and where that job came from and where that job came from, right?

Creating a tree of understanding like who is the first mover on this long line of new business. And how many times should I take that person out to lunch or dinner or check in with them and see how they're doing? Right. How can I stay in contact with these people that? Constantly open the door for me to have opportunities to do what I love to do.

And then how can I make opportunities for them? I was just I was at the graduation ceremony for the LAB program on Friday. And so Susie McHale is a she's an architect who now they have she and her husband Samuel have a company called four ideal designs. And they do BIM services for architects. Engineers, landscape architects.

They started just with architects, but because they're generous, helpful people, they kept meeting new people that needed their services. So now they work for lighting designers and now they work for mechanical engineers. And now they're building training courses for people. And their business keeps growing and changing.

But I interviewed another let's call him a digital practice architect, a guy named Mikhail. And I was just like, Hey, you guys do a similar thing, but kind of different. You should know each other. So this was, I don't know, four or five months ago.

Last Friday, Susie told me not only have they met Mikhail, love Mikhail, found out that he does all kinds of cool things that they don't do and they do cool things that he doesn't do, but they've each paid one another to teach them how to do these things. And now they're hiring each other to either train their staff on how to get better at these particular new business ventures, right?

Or they're coming together and collaborating on new things. Or if one of them gets overwhelmed with work, they're hiring the other one to help out. And Mikhail is in South Africa and they're in Virginia, Northern Virginia, right? And because I knew them both and knew that they were nice people, they've got this cool business thing, and they're both really thankful to me for connecting them.

What are they gonna do next time they have somebody who needs strategic design, strategic planning, help, help thinking through their future? I will absolutely be at the top of their mind of people to help, right? And so I just the larger your question was, are larger firms winning more work because they've operationalized business development?

The answer is yes, but that doesn't mean that it's not available to mid sized and smaller sized firms. It's an approach of thinking about business as a just a thing that you're joyfully doing.

Right. And if you take it one step further, instead of it being on an individual and therefore maybe creating a bottleneck, it's the firm that has the relationship. It's a s it's in the CRM, it's in your ops platform. Like right.

Yes, yes. That's right. Well, and I think, you know, as we're approaching this massive transfer of a firm ownership, it's understanding that like you have to have a zipper of relationships. So maybe there's partners that have relationships, but you need to have the next layer and the next layer and the next layer. They need to be connected too, right?

So that relationship is transferable between the companies and that the individuals that work together have a durable relationship.

So here's the elephant in the room though. Lots of architects worry that overemphasis on operational capabilities, whether that be the recording of leads in a CRM, whether that be the pricing of work with some sense of rigor to make sure it's not underpriced before you go deliver, proper resourcing kills the creativity. Like how pr presumably, let's be frank, you might have seen that happen.

Like what's some of the lessons that people can learn that like so they can operationalize, they can benefit from all the things we're talking about, but not have the negative effect.

Yeah. So there's two simple answers. One is if you actually look under the hood of the firms that are winning design awards, firm of the year awards, they are great businesses. They almost always have somebody who really cares about running the business. Like I interviewed Roy Decker and Anne Marie Duvall Decker, right? With Duvall Decker. They won Firm of the Year this year. And they have five different lines of business.

When I asked Roy to talk to me about his business, he was like, I'm so glad you called me about this because it's one of the things I'm most proud of. And nobody talks to me about our business. They want to talk about the design and the impact. And I love that.

But we had no training in this and we had to figure it out. And it's really cool. Like I want more people to know about it. So don't, don't be mistaken that the thing that you see people doing is the reason that they're successful. Right.

So one is I think there's a perception gap. And because we don't talk about it, we don't actually know how good they are. So that's one. The second is it doesn't have to be you. You don't have to be. If you're the creative director, you're the creative designer, you're the creative lead, you don't have to be the business person. You probably shouldn't. That's not your highest and best use.

But someone in your organization should, right? Someone should and needs to be focused on the business side of your business. For small and medium-sized businesses, this can get tough because they're small teams and everybody's wearing lots of hats. If you find it super draining. And it saps your energy and it ruins a Tuesday when you have to do invoices, hire a business manager, right?

There are relatively short, simple ways that you can outsource some of that energetically draining work to help you and your team grow and thrive. So I personally don't see how structure limits creativity, right? If I every piece of music that's ever been written fits on the seven-bar structure. Every piece of music, right?

So is Chopin less creative because he could write in notation in treble and bass clef? I don't think so. Right? Did having that system and that structure make his work stronger, better? More different, more difficult. I don't know. Did he lose anything by using musical notation to be able to coordinate the efforts of a of an entire symphony?

Actually, not, because the more organized you are, the more instruments you can bring in and the better work you can do. So, in some ways, like architects are always saying that we love limits because limits force us to be creative. Working, being a creative professional. The professional part is a limit, right?

But it's also an opportunity. And so I think if we can't see these things as opportunities, if we only see them as headaches, that's going to be the way that you feel about it. You know, perception is reality in a lot of ways. If you keep telling yourself a story that it's draining, well, then it will drain you.

But if you or someone on your team can get excited about it, you might be pretty excited about the benefits and the results, right? I mean, Ben, you see it in your work. I see it in my work when people tune up.

So like the process.

Their approach. They make more money. They have more time. They, they have, they can take bigger swings. They can do bigger things. They can make more impact. Sony Records, right? Or Apple has some of the most Disney, right? Disney, Sony, Industrial Light and Magic. They have some of the most talented creative people in the world. But they're not run.

Yeah, it's good.

By the most talented creative art artists in the world. They're run by some of the most innovative business people in the world. Right. And so they understand that, like an actor has an agent, for instance, who negotiates their fee in their contract. It allows the actor to stay in their creative mode and to do their best work and to get the best possible pay for the work that they're gonna do.

Maybe architects could think a little bit about bringing in some business resources to help them. Tune up their ask and get a little bit better at getting more money so they had a little bit more time to develop the solutions that they want or to explore the new opportunities, or even better yet, to start owning some of the value that they create instead of creating value for other people.

Have you got any examples of a firm who has like switched up? We think of like there's three key areas where we see so much margin opportunity loss. It's the underquoting at the initial con the initial conversation, it's then the not capturing scope creep, extensions, additional work, and then it's the resource that's sat underutilised, maybe on the bench, like do any of those three really stand out for you?

Have you got any numbers or thoughts around like how somebody listens to this call who goes, Yeah, those three really are a problem or one of those three is a real challenge, like where should where do we need to go from to get to turn this around?

Yeah, so it's interesting. We're kind of I'm thinking of the strategic council work that I did. We were looking at firms like Álvarez-Díaz & Villalón, right? Ricardo Alvarez Diaz. He and his wife Christina have built this unbelievable firm. It's they've got architecture services, interior design services, they're they've got development advisory services, they're developers and they're owners of property. They also started a printing company and they have a 3D printing company, right?

It's a husband-wife team that built this business in Puerto Rico. And the way that they've done it is every time there was an opportunity where they were they recognized that they were creating an opportunity for somebody else to make money. They ask the question, how can we get a portion or a part of that? Right.

And so some people, for instance, would give advisory services like looking at a pro forma or helping a developer create a pro forma as something I'm going to give away for free, a loss leader, to get their work. Ricardo would say, no, no, I'm very good at this.

I can, you can pay me as an I have an advisory company, you can pay my advisory company to help you build that pro forma and I can instruct you on the opportunities for that work. Now you're a trusted advisor and partner, right? Then that person might hire you to do the architectural work.

But let's say the developer has a different capital stack than your fee stack is going to be, right? So you say, well, I'll delay my payments to meet your capital stack, but you're gonna pay me a couple points on the upside of your project once it gets sold, right?

Now I have an ownership stake. So now you're starting to get paid whether you're working or not. Right. You're getting paid on the value that you're helping them create, which is the much bigger slice of the pie than what our traditional fees are. Right.

So there's one example of extending your market scope, right? Extending the timeline when you're involved, getting involved earlier, getting upstream, and then buying part of the upside. That means extending your timeline even further, right? Or you're involved with them longer. And then if they want to change the thing, you're either part owner or you're a trusted advisor and architect and development partner.

And now, if they want to go do another project, you're at the ground floor of whatever the next step is.

So that's one example, but you can think about smaller and medium-sized firms, their examples are much more charging for things that you're typically giving away, charging for things that are other people's full-time jobs, you know, thinking about other people like community engagement is a thing that architects often jam into schematic design to get better results for the owners.

But that's some people's full time jobs. It's all they do. They engage communities, they get information out of them. It's a really valuable service. It is not part of basic services, right? If you're not charging for that as an additional service, then you're I think you're leaving money on the table.

There's question that's come in that I have to interject because we're also running it tight to time, which is a real shame because I could do this for hours. That's really interesting. So no, but it's a question about time and materials billing, which I too have read a huge amount about, and I think there's a fear that AI can cannibalise that two ways.

Clients can do it themselves, and therefore the value of that time gets compressed. But also if you're doing T&M billing. And you're using technology and aid to speed things up, or does that mean that you bill out less? You touched on something there which I would call value based or outcome based pricing, which is like do you advocate for that move from T&M to fixed bid to then value based? Okay, talk a little bit about that, I guess.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. So anyone who's paying attention to AI knows that it's coming for white collar work, right? And repetitive work is going to be the first thing that it's eating up. It ate up coding because coders were building it, right?

Now it's eating up other industries. And if you look at how architects' fees go, we go like schematic design, design development, construction documents, construction administration. I would argue that we create the most value for projects and clients. In the early phase, identifying the problem and solving it. And in the last phase, making sure that the project is built correctly.

And then it just simply takes a lot of time to do that center part, which is turning the idea into the reality of instructions to give to a builder to build it. But it's clear that AI is gonna come for that big hump.

So if you're doing hourly-based billing, it's going to eat your profits rapidly, right? Technology is going to change either the expectation or the reality of production. And hourly billing is going to go away. Other industries that have faced similar challenges shifted to more of an advisory role, more of a values and outcomes-based pricing model. And I think this industry needs to make that shift as quickly as possible.

If you haven't already, you need to start having those conversations and thinking about things as percentages of cost, percentages of outcome, right? That you're not necessarily casting things in terms of the number of people it takes and the time it takes. Because then you're really only limited, you're basically a mechanic. How many lanes do I have? How many butts do I have? How many seats? Right.

And that is your upper limit of your engine. But other industries like technology, music, et cetera, right, have figured out that you can take a few people, create a product, and sell it more times, or create a few people, create a product that has a higher value than your hourly rate.

I'm gonna invite other questions. If anybody has got something they wanted to ask Shawn, please feel free to use the chat or the QA because we've got three minutes left. I had some more though, Shawn.

So if you were working with a small and medium sized practice and they were looking at 30 different things and you just had and you told them just three things, three KPIs or numbers to start obsessing over, where would you start with that?

Yeah. I so architects are often obsessed with utilization, which is the amount of billable hours you're working versus the amount of non-billable hours. But I think architects should focus on the combination of utilization and realization. How many of those hours that you're working on are you actually getting paid for? Right.

So realization is what's most important. I can have great utilization. I'm billing this time to the project, but let's say I'm scrope creep has come in and now we're doing a bunch of stuff we're not getting paid for. That thing was supposed to take me two hours, but it took me 12 hours, right? I could have great utilization rates, but my realization rate is really low.

So I'd say combining utilization and realization. I think the time for payment, like the time for payment of invoices is really important, making sure that you've got your cash flow steady so that you're not having the kind of ups and downs and dips.

So keeping track on. Payment and making sure that you have either contract terms or agreements and understandings or auto reminders, like operationalizing that process to make sure that cash is coming, invoice early and often, right? Like as soon as you complete things, you don't have to wait till the end of the month, but like getting cash flow coming in just helps kind of alleviate the stress.

Again, like less survival instinct, more creative instinct, right? Kind of staying on that side. And I think keeping an eye on your hit rates and your win rates is really important because understanding what projects you should go for is a d a good determinant of how you spend that limited resource of your money to do your development effort.

So, like VMDO architects, for instance, if they don't have a likelihood of their metric of their go no go that's north of 70%, they won't go after a project. And they have a hit rate of 76%, which is mind-blowing for this industry, right?

But that means they had to have an established relationship. They had to know the project. They had to have an in, they had to have a great, you know, it had to be a great, they have a clear go-no-go.

So developing a clear go-no-go and using it and testing it, and making sure that the projects you're winning are actually the kinds of projects that are pointing towards the future you want, right? Not pointing towards if the projects you're winning. Are hurting your profitability, you don't want to win more of those projects, right? You want to win more of the projects that are kind of benefiting you and growing.

So I don't know if that helps, but I mean those are the things that I would advise. Yeah. Yeah.

It does, and was going ask you another question, but just because we're at time, I'll quickly say if you all are interested in learning more about how to solve some of these problems on CMap, we have a demo next week, which is with our North American AEC expert talking you through how to sort of like operationalise BD, business developments, sales through CRM, your pricing, your delivery.

So feel free to sign us that the links in the chat. Shawn, do you have to jump or if people are interested in just hanging off a couple? Just got a couple I've just got a couple more questions that think are really valuable and on this subject. Like and we've talked about the spectrum of running an architect practice from business development and origination.

No, I'm great. I'm happy to I'm happy to hang for a minute. Yeah. Yeah.

Entering RFPs versus trusted relationships and going back for referrals to pricing your work, knowing the value of that time, not being taught in school, but understanding it. Delivery, that advisory piece, the bell curve that you talked about, which is the most valuable, and that move from T&M to fixed fee.

We haven't covered a huge amount of finances, but you've started to touch on at the end there like things about like realization, I think of productive utilization and cash flow. Where should a business start tomorrow?

Which one of those do you think is the biggest bang for buck that you feel like judging most of the architects you've worked with, you feel like, if I could just change that in every firm, like we'd be in a much better spot.

Yeah, I've so we the thing that's that we've touched on a lot is this sort of hesitation or resistance to business, hesitation or resistance to the structure. And I think you have to track everything and you have to look with clear eyes at the data, right?

So you have to track your time and know where it's going. Not is not the ideal kind of FTE proposal you made when you were putting your fee proposal together, but what did it actually take? This team to do this project with this client, right? And what should you ask for a fee next time?

A lot of times I see architects kind of refreshing not the analysis of the last project with this client for their proposal, but the last proposal to the client. So if you're not comparing what we thought was going to happen and what actually happened, and doing that at the end at a close out process for every project, you're missing really key information, it which could be.

This combination of people is getting us wildly profitable projects, right? They're getting things done, they're getting them done faster. They should be teaching everybody how they do it. Or something about this team or this team working with this client isn't quite working. We need to figure out what it is so that we don't go down this rabbit hole again, right?

Or this type of client is actually costing us a lot of money, but this type of client is making us a lot of money. So you have to look at and study and analyze those trends. Utilization, realization. Net profit margin, right? You've talked about profit margin on your previous like recordings. I've seen you talk about them.

Like, I think understanding where you are, what your benchmark is, what your target is, and making it a game to get there is the best way. If you don't know what you're doing, you can't know where you're going, right?

So you have to know where you are, you have to analyze and understand these things. So architects are fascinated and c and focused on. Project performance, but your firm's performance is a combination of all of the projects, right?

And so improving operation operations to make any one project more profitable is gonna get your all of your projects more profitable. And so I don't know if that answers your question specifically, like where to start. I think start paying attention to tracking your time. Making yourself committing yourself to it and telling your people that, hey, this is really important.

I need you to be honest because we need to see what's actually happening here. And then having regular, monthly or quarterly check-ins with your project managers, with your leadership team and looking at project performance and learning from the data. Don't do it as a scold, don't do it as like a wagging fingers.

Do it as an opportunity to grow and learn and really celebrate the hell out of the people that are knocking the cover off the ball because they can teach the rest of your team. How to do what they do, right? You might have hidden experts that you haven't quite recognized their capabilities. And who wouldn't, who doesn't like a bonus, right?

At the end of the year, who doesn't like being able to buy better Christmas presents for their family or, you know, a trip to Maui or whatever, whatever you would do with some extra money or an investment in more capacity, right? To grow your firm.

So the other thing is if you're not thinking about the time it takes you to do things, you're not gonna know if. These new technologies that you're trying to adopt are actually saving you time. Because my experience with AI is it helps with some things and it makes other things more complicated. And the thing that it's making more complicated from my perspective is judgment.

Judgment and discernment are actually the skills that are going to be most valuable going forward. And that usually rests in a fewer people, right? Leaders, a small group of people. And if everyone is creating more ideas and more possibilities and more things that have to be evaluated, we're actually going to create a bigger bottleneck at the judgment gap.

And so that's a real challenge. And we're not going to know if this technology. So people have recognized that you can feed a sketch or a plan or whatever into your combination of models, right? Your AI, and you can get a digital a walkthrough coming out of it. Well, that's great.

U L Yeah.

But are you billing for that? Did you plan that as a deliverable? Are you adding a new deliverable on top of an already stressed deliverable stack that you're already not getting paid enough for? Does that make sense? Like, like if you get time savings, are you giving the time savings to your client? Are you keeping it for yourself?

If you get time saving it and in the history, I saw Whitney said in the chat that like we've had technological advances in the past that have created productivity gains. In my experience, we've given most of those to our clients. I'm actually worried that architects are going to repeat that mistake.

If we don't keep the gains and use them to improve our service, use them to improve our firms, then we're going to continue in this race to the bottom.

Also keep them whilst there is gonna be pressure on you from other ways, anyway. So you've got to use it to balance out some of the negative components. So you touched on four things that are amazing. I'm gonna try and remember all of it.

So the best operator that I ever met inside one of the most successful professional services firms that I ever spoke to, they were doing like 60% EBITDA, they're doing like 80% gross margin, they had a wild exit. He said to me, things that don't get tracked don't get done.

So to your point on things on data, that always resonated with me. The second thing, you won't have known this, but across our 700 clients, across a range of geos, a range of professional services and markets, the firms that are demonstrating growing revenue margin headcount, they're in our highest performing cohort the most, are those obsessed over.

We call it project margin, but it's essentially what you said, which is comparing what gets done in live real time versus what was initially priced. Like that is the one thing. And like we've got thousands of data points on our platform that like so we in complete alignment there. There was a couple of other things.

I'm gonna have to rewatch the recording, but you were you're just hitting nails on the head constantly with me. Yeah. Yeah.

We talked about net profit margin. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's everything, right? If you're n it's also the other thing about that is that's what your client expects, right? It's a list of the things that you've told your client you're gonna give them. You know what I mean? Like project performance. How quickly did we get them to that gate? And how well did we get them there?

And how predictably, how much did they enjoy the process? Right. If you aren't always running through the tape at the last minute, totally exhausted, you can focus on client service. You can focus on resolving conflicts before they get too big. You can recognize challenges and patterns.

You can see the shift in somebody's face when you ask a question that you might not see if you're not paying attention, to recognize that, there's I should go deeper on that. Like we should talk a little, there's something over there. That's concerning this person and I should know about it. You know what mean?

If you're always stressed and strained, you're not gonna see those things and you're gonna catch them when they're a big problem. Like preventative medicine costs much less than the ER visit. And architects, I think, are always kind of in the business ER. And I'm recommending like what you're talking about is like preventative medicine. Eat your vegetables, do your exercise, have these regular meetings, look at your project performance, learn from your mistakes.

Learn from your successes, distribute best practices across your company. And again, if you're a leader and you don't love that stuff, somebody on your team is looking for an opportunity to step up to lead and they will track that stuff down.

So give them a chance to grow, stay in your firm and make it better, right? And get to show their demonstrate their expertise and make you more profitable and more money or give you more time so you can do the awesome work. Like it's not either or, it's yes and, you know, for me. I think the way I see it.

I appreciate you giving us extra time, Shawn. I appreciate everyone who's stuck with us as well. I think that's awesome. We've got two final polls. I like if you could if you can share with us your perspectives, I'll make sure on the follow-up you'll get some insights.

But we were asking questions like which number in your business do you care most about? Revenue of billings, project profitability utilization. And then there was another question around where does your firm lose the most margin, which relating to an earlier point we were doing so scope creep, underpriced fees.

So if you have a second before we finish up, please give us your thoughts on those poll responses and I'll make sure we get you the insights in the follow up. Shawn, I've learned two things that are critical going forwards. One, I need to make sure my camera lighting and video doesn't fail.

Second, I need two hours of you on the next webinar because there was so like there's so much in there. Genuinely I could talk all down this. It sounds like I've met my match. So I really appreciate all the insights that you've given.

Ben, I'm here anytime. I love it. If we want to stay focused and stay on time, we'll just have to like narrow in on a topic. But as you can like you, I'm super passionate about this. I really want people to thrive and succeed. And like you, I'm an optimist about this stuff. Like I see all the upside and the downside, usually once people start winning.

You know, once people start seeing the changes in their business, all those complaints go away. The problem the complaints are there because everything else is exhausting and they're not seeing the rewards they want. That's the reality, I think a lot of times.

And so if you compare healthy practices with positive business outcomes, man, it's the best. It's the best.

Do you know what I th I keep thinking, I keep thinking I keep looking at that some of the data, which is downtrends, but I'm like, well, if SMBs reverse this, and we're already in a like firms are already good, like people are doing great work, people seem to be having a good time. I'm like, if we can just turn this corner, like the market's in a fantastic

Yeah. Well, I think, man, the thing is the thing that I try to, there's two lessons I've learned in the last decade. One is anybody that says we can't do big things and make big changes wasn't paying attention over the last 10 years. Like the COVID pandemic was a global demonstration that when there is enough pressure, people can change everything about their lives. And keep going.

And cool stuff can come out on the other side. Some weird stuff, some things you might not want, maybe some digital habits you wish you didn't have, right? Some kind of, you know, people got a little stir crazy. And there were obviously massive negative health outcomes, right? Like people suffered. It was a it was a difficult time, but some really interesting stuff popped out of the other side of COVID, right?

Different ways of thinking about work, different ways of being present, different you're in the UK. I'm here in the US. Like having these kinds of conversations is totally normal. Be you can work anywhere. If you're good at what you do and you build great relationships, like the technology has never been better for you to be able to make an impact, make a connection, grow a business somewhere else, right? That's awesome.

Like that is game changing. So like we can make huge changes. I think the other thing is just pay attention to what people are doing and what they need. Cause there's so much market opportunity that we as architects, give away to consultants, give away to other industries, think isn't ours. And the technology we have now, you can start solving problems for yourself.

So, Todd Sigity, one of the things that SHoP Architects did, they created a technology, a piece of software to evaluate developable area in New York based on like the complicated codes and 3D models of the city that they were using for their own work. They ended up licensing it to other developers and then they ended up selling that company.

Like you can build a thing that makes your job easier that you can either sell to other people to make their jobs better or you can sell as a product. That's great. Like we've never been at a better time to do that. Like this is a it's a pretty fantastic time to be alive if you're a creative, innovative person. And that would be like, that's my send-off thought.

Yeah, I love the optimism to send people off and appreciate everyone who's stuck with us. Hopefully you got a lot of value out of this. There's gonna be some really good follow up. This is the starting point for us on this discussion. Shawn, I'd love to have you back and because there's people in the audience watching, I'm applying that pressure so that we can do that.

But maybe we slice and dice it into a little mini s I don't know, but like genuinely really great insights, so much that people can take.

I'd love it, man. Yeah, absolutely. Just let me know. I'm there. Love what you're doing. Love your community. We're definitely aligned and I just want to help people thrive like you. So yeah, let's do it. Yeah, man.

Right. Cool. So everybody's still here. Thanks again. We'll end the session now. Look for any follow-ups from us if you want to have conversation. Shawn's LinkedIn in the chat, mine too. I don't want to speak on your behalf. I'm always happy to just have a quick fifteen, twenty minutes talk about any of these things.

But yeah, cool. Great. Well have a good afternoon, everyone. You two, Shawn, and see you soon. Thank you. Thanks. Bye.

Thanks, Ben. See ya. Bye.