T-Square Dad's Brown Bag
Professional practice and parenthood can be challenging. As a father, a husband and an architect we embrace the challenge but we understand how difficult it is to navigate through these obligations. In this podcast we focus our discussion and base our opinion from a father's perspective. The T-Square Dad's podcast will focus our experience, reading habits, lesson's learned while practicing architects and how the practice impacts our daily life as a father. We will also focus on how technology impacts our profession and how the lack of experts and training fails our profession. We hope that our podcast bring value to others and is a constant reminder of how life can change quickly and impact us all and our profession.
T-Square Dad's Brown Bag
#026 - Sole Proprietorship
Discussing the challenges of sole proprietorship and the many "hats" you have to wear to succeed.
Audio file
Transcript
Welcome to the T square dad's Brown Bag podcast. Here's your host, Kyle Baker and Dieter Burrell.
Welcome back to the T square dads Brown Bag podcast.
Deter, and I had lunch today with a couple of colleagues and.
It it triggered, it triggered me.
Probably it's like I can't see myself do all the work that theater does at my office.
That's why I people can I can, I can disseminate work to other people and I go that.
Great that you have that resource that's that's a good resource and.
Yeah, I mean you you have to wear a lot of hats, right?
Doing sole proprietorship, right?
You're the one riding the contracts.
You're the one sourcing the clients.
You're the one drafting the projects, doing the specification.
I'm like you're doing from as I like to call cradle to grave of the project.
That's that's a lot, and I don't necessarily do that.
I kind of oversee a lot of that stuff and I can do all of those things, but I don't.
Necessarily do it on every project.
I'm sure you guys can go online and check it out.
And and you guys can educate yourself, I don't have to get into into that, but.
I just, I just barely knew what architecture was because of what schooling I had.
We're doing, you know, concepts, ideas and and learning about architects.
Learn about styles and everything else.
Of like, I think it wasn't just the drafting portion, but it was.
I think we had a what is a professional practice in, in, in, in school where they talk about stuff?
Oh, so that's starting to bleed more into what we're talking about.
Like, I think I took a a preservation course which didn't.
I think it was the I'm going to call it the fast food, the rubber stamping of like just constant.
You know master plans, you know, real quick gas stations, you know, anything and everything.
You can just shove those things into.
I mean, so one of the things like, like I said, it came up at lunch day and.
You know, I'm getting ready to be licensed and I'm still working at a firm and everything like that.
But like, think about somebody.
Who is newly licensed and they want to go out on their own like.
There's so many parts of being an architect that aren't just design right?
How do you get that experience?
How do you learn to do those things?
Well, you do it if you brush your teeth and comb your hair every day.
And I did little little notes on it or I wrote down on a mirror every morning, things that I need.
To get done, that's what I call repetitive behavior, which is a type of discipline that.
It's inherent in some people and learn and others, yeah.
And they put, push, push, push pins.
And they had a marker board and they put notes and they stick them there.
And you know, that's how they tracked themselves.
And they have multiple things sequentially.
Now you some people use the software.
Some people use outlook, some people use.
What is that management program?
You know, that kind of keeps them track of things.
Now some people use tools in the trade that you know are common in other trades.
You know, contractors use that same.
Are there people that you reach out?
Do you have you found strategies to learn that information more?
I I think the more you're exposed.
See, I've found that now that I've moved.
Think like you don't want to be the person that bounces around all the time, obviously, right?
Yeah, and and so and not only that, but it.
You it's not 8IN Pensacola, right? It's you had some in Miami. You had some in Arizona.
You had some wherever and you gained a little bit of knowledge from each of those.
But so some of this just takes time, right?
But I think you know, for someone like me, that's fairly new.
Like I've been in the architecture work for.
10 years having a team or a network of people to be able to.
Call on is one of the big things.
Like anyone that could come straight out of school, take all their tests and start their own firm.
I've heard this from people in the past and you don't know what you don't know, and that's OK.
You're saying that you're you don't know what you don't know.
That's an idiotic statement, by the way.
I don't want to ever hear anybody tell me that you don't know what you don't know because you.
You don't know yourself either do.
I mean we we have talked about that before like not knowing.
I think what happens is I think arrogance.
Fauci and and didn't hear that anyways, but I think that's.
You can fast track learning how to run your own business if you work.
Most likely I would be spending a lot of time doing residential.
And it's also very important for mentors in offices.
Because and here's one thing I learned I didn't learn early on.
And it's because they mooch offer you a company?
As for Pete's sake, you would.
You don't even know how much they'll love to mooch on you because they need the manual labor.
Because I think it is your responsibility as an intern.
To challenge that those people to mentor you, and if they can't step up, you need to step away.
And one thing that I do like I've gotten to a point where I now can manage people, right.
So I have younger people than I.
I'm no longer the youngest person at my firm so.
So I have younger people than me, right?
And so I want to give those people the opportunities.
That I got and the ones that I wish I would have gotten.
And so that's a challenge for any of the other, you know, senior level staff.
For you know, people that have been in the industry for 20.
And and the way that that happens, I think.
Is is by learning from other people's mistakes, right? But a lot of people want you to have to make.
That that's the that's the fear.
That's the fear that I see in a lot of firms they.
Don't want you to make mistakes.
If I tell you without having to show you how to do division that you know 9 / 3 is 3.
Well, you should get that right every time.
You should have to learn division in order to be able to do that, right?
Like I've already made that mistake.
I'm teaching you now, you know.
Here's a perfect, simple, simple, perfect example.
Imagine your son or your daughter, or a small child.
You were teaching them how to ride a bicycle.
I can ride, I can ride, I can ride and.
Yell and scream at him, yell and scream at.
Him, you either going cater to him and saying ohh baby, it's OK, it's all right.
Tend to his mistake and then pick him back up, right?
Because if you go there, say Ohh baby, it's OK.
You just shut the whole growth out, you say?
You be so dumb to make that mistake.
I can't believe that you wouldn't know that.
That's the way that we don't do.
We're going to get back into this project and we're going to keep pushing it forward.
But you know, cause you also don't want it to be like, oh, well, I'm just gonna.
Just gonna fix it and I'm not gonna tell him.
Don't let that person say, hey, I want you to the.
Best manager was the worst manager ever had and he said.
How are you going to manage it?
The other thing with that and you know, we'll wrap this up.
And the ones that are going to struggle for a long time and the biggest.
The telltale sign of that is the one that's not afraid to come to my desk and ask me a question.
And if I say, hey, look, I don't have time for.
For the right answer and when I come back 20 minutes later, they go hey, I found this.
Actually, that's not a bad way to do it.
Yeah, let's look into that or no, we don't want to do it that way.
Here's the way we typically do it right.
But we have to have people that are in our offices that are not afraid to ask questions.
And that's based on the culture that we set.
They cannot be afraid to ask questions and.
Like, yeah, there are things I don't know.
And so I called, I called Peter or I call whoever, right?
And I said, hey man, have you ever done this before?
So I even have older architects call me and ask me questions.
Maybe we should do that one day.
Maybe we should have a live and we.
We could figure it out if anybody is interested in doing that.
This is not legal advice, but.
If you're interested in doing that, go to our Facebook page and let us know.
Leave us a comment or something and maybe I'll create a post for.
As always, the joke of the day.
Which vegetable is cool, but not that cool.
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