Successful Project Planning for Small Firm Architects (Transcript)

This is the transcript from EntreArchitect Podcast Episode 226, Successful Project Planning for Small Firm Architects.

Listen to this podcast episode or download the audio file here.

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***Start Transcript***

Mark R. LePage:           

Do you know how to calculate the exact amount that you need to charge your clients in order to earn 20 percent profit on that project? It’s simple to do. If you don’t know how, learn how by downloading our free course profit for small firm architects today at EntreArchitect.com/freecourse. My name is Mark R. LePage and you are listening to EntreArchitect podcast where I speak with inspiring, passionate people who share their knowledge and expertise all to help you build a better business as a small firm entrepreneurial architect. This is episode 226 and this week Robert Yuen of Morpholio is back and we’re talking about Successful Project Planning for Small Firm Architects.

This episode of EntreArchitect podcast is supported by our platform sponsors, ARCAT, the online resource, delivering quality building material information, CAD details, then specifications and much more at ARCAT.com. Freshbooks, the cloud based accounting software that makes running your small firm easy, fast and secure, spend less time on accounting and more time doing the work that you love and Gusto. Gusto is making payroll benefits and HR easy for small businesses. Modern technology does the heavy lifting, so it’s easy to get things right.

Robert Yuen, welcome back to EntreArchitect podcast. It’s good to have you back. This is your third visit back here. Let me introduce you and then and we’ll get into a little bit about who you are, where you were and where you’re going and all that good stuff. Robert Yuen builds tools and software. He’s a partner at Design Agency Dixon and Moe and a cofounder of  Section Cut and Monograph. He’s a serial entrepreneur, a trained architect and an expert in designing software solutions and he’s zealously productive. This is Robert’s third time back here, as I mentioned, Episode 133 where he shared his story and got into Section Cut and Monograph and the origin story of where he came from and how he got to where he is, so if you want to sort of learn more about Section Cut and the origins of Monograph and a little bit more about Dixon and Moe the designing and see, go back to Episode 133 and then  I invited Robert bacE for episode 150 to talk about how to build beautiful websites.

So that’s a great episode about what should be in a website and what makes a successful and effective website. So go back to Episode 150 to learn about that. I wanted to invite Robert back for an update, sort of get back into what’s going on. He’s got an active firm over there and he’s building a couple of businesses and Monograph is growing and evolving and new things are happening. So I wanted to bring you back, Robert, to sort of give us an update on what’s happening. So why don’t you start, just sort of remind us of your origin story and then give us an update on Monograph and what’s going on over there.

Robert Yuen:               

Sure. I’ll make this quick since there’s a couple of episodes that covered my origin story, but just so everyone can get up to speed. Trained as an architect grew up in Chicago, did my MArch and MS at University of Michigan. I worked at a couple of firms both big and small before striking out on my own to start the agency and now really focusing on a Monograph, the brand and our new product called Monograph Dashboard.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah. Monograph Dashboard, talk about that a little bit. What is Monograph Dashboard? Because Monograph, when you first launched Monograph, Monograph was all about websites which are still still doing, but there’s a new product that Monograph. And so what’s going on over there?

Robert Yuen:               

Yeah. So, you know, Monograph websites still going, very popular. We have 700 plus architects on that platform, but along the way we also received a lot of requests on other things that need solutions for, that are just headaches in terms of running an architectural practice. And a few of those things are better time tracking tools, tproject management tools, better project planning tools in general. So that’s really the inspirational where Monograph Dashboard started. It was really listening to our early customers, truly relying back on my previous experience and now looking to solve some of those problems.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah, this is a common request to EntreArchitect from the community always asking what’s a reference or a recommendation for a product that can manage projects that can plan out projects and, up until now, there really hasn’t been a great solution for small firms. There’s a bunch of solutions out there for large firms and there are some non architecture focused planning tools but  there was never really anything really for smaller firm architects. And so when, when you showed me Dashboard, I’m like, whoa, Dashboard is exactly what everybody’s looking for. We should talk about this on the podcast. So why don’t you get into Dashboard a little bit and what it is, how it works. And then we’ll talk about project planning a little bit.

Robert Yuen:               

Yeah, it’s fairly straightforward. We’re still very young, very new and building a lot of features with some of the core features that we wanted to focus on early and make sure we get it right was just making time tracking simple, making sure that time tracking can be based on phases and by projects and another big thing that I think most competitors don’t have is to make sure you as a small firm, you can switch roles fairly easy on her project. Meaning you can, you can be a small firm and sometimes you have to wear the hat of a principal and sometimes you have to wear the hat of a designer and to make sure that you can track on both types of roles.

Mark R. LePage:          

Yeah, I think that’s key for our community. I’m always talking about the many hats we’re all wearing  and to be able to track our time in each one of these roles, which then can also be tracked to different amounts that we’re billing for that type of work because sometimes if we’re doing drafting work, we’re billing at one price and if we’re designing, we’re billing at another price. And so it’s great to have a tool that we can change things around like that.

Robert Yuen:               

Yeah. And I think what’s one of our most popular features right now that’s finished and it’s really early, but it’s just an easy way to just visualize, well, how much of the fee is left and how much of the fee have you used. Not just numbers, but really in a visual way and that really theoretically shouldn’t be that hard. If you’re logging your time and you’re tracking how many hours you’re working and how much of that is worth, it should be really easy for us, for me to tell you that visually how much fee you have left.

Mark R. LePage:           

I love that part of Dashboard. Before we get too deep into this, I just want to let everybody know that this is not a commercial for Monograph or Dashboard. It’s just that Robert showed it to me. I loved it and I just wanted to bring Robert on here and talk about it. So I just wanted to let everybody know that this is not a commercial or a paid advertisement, but I do like it. And so that’s one of the things I do like about it, Robert, is that you can, you can budget the time and you can budget the value and you see them simultaneously on the software, so you can see where you are in terms of time and where you are in terms of budget, you know, and for multiple projects all at the same time on Dashboard. So talk about  you know, if we needed to plan out a project, you know, what are the things that we need to focus on, whether we’re using a tool like Dashboard or not, we just want to put together a spreadsheet of some sorts. What are the things that we need to be focused on in order to properly plan out a project?

Robert Yuen:               

It’s quite a lot of things to focus on, especially running a phase project. One of the few things that we can all do a little bit better is really understanding the value of tracking time. I know it was really difficult and you know, there’s a lot of other tools out there and they’re all good, you can even use Excel. Those are fantastic options depending on the size of the firm, but just placing some volume, really understanding how you as an individual and you as a small team are doing based on your time. Because from there it would be quite easy to see do you even know? Are you quoting correctly? Are you profitable before you look at your bank account? Those are really simple things I think are crucial in the early process of just setting the system up. So you can track your own time appropriately.

Mark R. LePage:           

You really can’t properly plan a project without tracking your time. Right?

Robert Yuen:               

And too many architects try. They skip it because it’s tedious. They skip it because honestly, I don’t even like to do it myself, but these are, these are critical things to do or you don’t have any metrics. You really have no insight into your own operations.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah. As a sole practitioner, you know, many people think that they don’t have to, you know, I’m the only guy here so why do I need to track my time? But in order to be able to plan out your projects and to know how long things take, you have to track it. You have to be able to put that data into some sort of tool that you can go back and look at how long things took. Not only for planning but for billing, you know, and just to understand how much your time costs you to complete a project.

Robert Yuen:               

There’s ways around it. I know a few of my friends have, they bill basically by hour so essentially they don’t lose any value, but at the same time it’s also hard if you’re not tracking by hour initially and even then it’s hard to then gauge profitability if you’re only billing for hours. A lot of other firms build project base fees. That’s what time tracking becomes even more crucial because you do really want to know how much your hourly worth is after a project is completed.

Mark R. LePage:           

How important is it to have a tool that you can, that can be remote, you know, that can go with you?

Robert Yuen:               

In modern day times, so important. Especially if we were using Revit, we’re using advanced 3D modeling programs, like you’d have a pretty powerful machine, but also most of us are on the go. So like the ability to access information on your mobile devices, to access information on a tablet is so important these days. Most of the principals now know you’re always on the go and you just can’t take that desktop with you.

Mark R. LePage:           

So once you have your time strategy figured out and you start tracking your time, what’s the next thing that needs to be tracked or included in your planning?

Robert Yuen:               

I think the next step is really understanding how you invoice. I know a few friends are still based on phase based invoicing, which I think is very difficult and we do it in my firm at Dixon and Moe. We provide a service, we build software for other companies. It’s very difficult to invoice and bill on a phase based structure. My highly recommendation to most firms to go monthly. Figure out then percentage based fee is either to phase based or hourly. But this way you can predict your monthly recurring revenue.

Mark R. LePage:           

So get in to that a little bit because I don’t really understand that. So if I’m going to do a project and the total fee is $100,000, let’s say the project cost is $100,000. So what do you recommend in terms of how to bill to the services that for that $100,000 project?

Robert Yuen:               

Yeah, and keep in mind everyone that I’m speaking from a perspective of a design software as a service. So there might be some differences in terms of providing architectural services, but let’s say a fee of $100,000. Phase one of the of that project might be, let’s say schematic design and we’re going to say it’s gonna take three months and it’s going to be worth 30 percent. So 30, $30,000. What I would do is I tell the client, well, the way I will invoice you, it’s $10,000 a month. The amount I invoice is disassociated with the task I deliver, right? It’s still the goal is to finish the phase in three months, but for me to run a business, this is how we’re going to invoice and it’s going to be every first week of the month. You have net 30 to pay and it’s $10,000 each.

Mark R. LePage:           

That’s very interesting. And so you figure out your total total fee, you figure out based on experience and tracking your time, how long each phase takes, come up with a percentage and then that percentage is your phase. What if you don’t know how long your phases are going to be?

Robert Yuen:               

Best guess, right? Like sometimes it’s hard and I think you have to adjust your contract and the way you invoice in a way where you can predict what your next month’s invoice and billings are going to be. Really what I like is it disassociate that from actual deliverables. It doesn’t mean I’m not working, but it does mean this is how my business operates and this is how we invoice. And that kind of helps in future conversations. Well, why are you to invoice me when you haven’t done that much work? And that’s because now that’s already off the table, right? Like this is how we engage each other from from a business to a customer. As a service, this is the way I operate and you know, it’s this or you can go somewhere else but this way it really allows me to forecast. I can see a year to two years out of what my monthly billings are going to be, which really takes a lot of pressure off and I can really just focus on design and providing good service.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah. Just a few weeks back, maybe a month back, I had Blair Enns the author of Pricing Creativity and the Win Without Pitching manifesto. And he talks about value based pricing, which is exactly what you’re talking about. Take the hourly pricing away and the percentage based pricing away, take the pricing away from the deliverables and you base the value, the price on the value of what you’re bringing to your client. And so you could base it on all those percentages in whatever you want, but what you’re presenting to a client is that you’re going to  provide this result. And this is the cost for that result. And all of the stuff that goes along with that doesn’t matter to the client. What matters to the client is that you’re going to get the result and this is what that result costs.

So there’s value to that result and here’s the cost for that value. And then once you have that set up that way and what Robert’s saying is now you have that big lump of money that you’re going to get paid. Break that up into phases and then break that up into monthly billing. And that’s the importance of tracking your time and tracking your projects so you can see it and you can start predicting how long these phases really do take. If you don’t track your time and track your progress and the amount of work that you’re providing in that amount of time, you don’t know, which is why it’s important to track your time and to understand how products are developed. And so I love that idea and I’ve been thinking a lot about pricing. I think architects, that’s something we all struggle with a lot about how we should charge for our services, how much should we charge and what structure should we charge and I really liked this idea of value based pricing.

Robert Yuen:               

Yeah. And it just keeps it simple. Like the client knows is very predictable for them, it’s almost like paying rent or anything else. Like as long as we’re working, they don’t have to figure out, well this month I’m going to pay you more, next month I’m gonna pay you less. It’s just one price for them consistently throughout that phase. What I do want to say like you’re not going to get it right the first time. I didn’t get it right the first time. It takes experience to understand and better scope work, which is still very important but there’s no way that you can deliver on a project did we don’t know how to scope a project appropriately.         

To be honest with you, my firm the we’ve lost money. Almost the first half of the year until we can kind of get a read and get a really better understanding of how do we work, how fast can we provide service, how well can provide service and what are market rates that we can actually win, right? Like if we’re winning jobs too easy, you should reflect on that. Are you too cheap or you just gaining popularity, which is good. But there’s a difference, right? If you’re too cheap, there’s movement, there’s wiggle room for you to essentially ask for more fee. And if you’re not winning work when you think you should be then maybe you’re too expensive and you should reevaluate that as well.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah, I think there’s a lot of fear in pricing. I think that many of us bill hourly or percentage because that way we don’t have to guess or we don’t have to commit to a number, right? If it’s hourly, we get paid for every hour you work. If it’s a percentage, we get paid whatever that project costs, you know, if the project gets bigger, we get paid more. If the project gets smaller, we get paid less. So it’s very easy to do that. It’s convenient and there’s no fear in that. And so when you go to a value based pricing system, there’s a fear too that, you know, I’ve always bileld percentage based because it’s sort of, you know, I’ve felt that it’s that it’s the most fair process and that’s a whole nother argument. There’s a lot of people who disagree with that but I think it’s fair because it goes up and down with whatever the client chooses to the to proceed with, you know, they get to approve the project as it goes along.

They approved the process and they approve the budget and then our fee goes along with that fee. But I’m really starting to reconsider this after my conversation with Blair and now talking with you, Robert, about pricing and how it makes the cashflow better. Because Blair sort of talked about pricing and the psychology of pricing, I think that’s Episode 219 if anybody wants to go back and listen to that, but Robert’s talking about how do you more effectively plan out your projects and get billed and make sure that there’s cash flow coming in and I like that too. I like that, you know, I could break up my fee and say, okay, I know that I’m in in August, I’m going to get this much money because I have this project, I have this overall fee and this is how much it’s scheduled to bill out in August, that makes my business run smoother. And so that’s really important. I love that.

Robert Yuen:               

Yeah. It’s part of the planning and strategy process, you’re not even putting pen to paper yet. It’s really just thinking about how, how far do I have to look out? When do I have to really step on the the business development process again? And all this helps where like if you can simplify your and make your monthly billables predictable you can now make really easy decisions because you can see how August I’m fine, December, I’m not, and I usually also know then like it takes me about three months to find new leads to develop new business. So that means that I should probably started in October knowing that I’m going to be low on revenue in December.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah. I’m gonna start diving into this value based pricing a little bit more. I’m inspired by where you’re talking about from a business point of view and and I think it makes a lot of sense. I think from the client’s point of view, it’s what they’re looking for too, they want the certainty of a price, you know, they want this result and this is what I’m going to pay for it.

Robert Yuen:               

Right, right. Because I think there’s a psychology when you go hourly and like, well, why did one set of drawings take you four times as long as the other and then now you’re stuck in a position where you have to defend why that process took a little longer, why troubleshooting for that design strategy took a little longer than the other components of the project. It really puts the architect or the designer in the awkward position and then there’s moments where experience pays off and you do something really fast but you’re only capturing the value of just that few hours when really that’s worth a lifetime of education or a lifetime of experience.

Mark R. LePage:           

Let’s take a quick break to say thank you to our platform sponsors here at EntreArchitect ARCAT, Freshbooks and Gusto. Well, this episode is released on Friday, June 22nd. That means I am in New York City. Are you in New York City this week for AIA Conference on Architecture? If you are, if you’re here in New York, come visit our friends at ARCAT and you may just find me there as well. Just look for the big red A at booth 707 at the Javits Center. Come grab some coffee this morning with ARCAT. They’ve been serving up all weekm and all throughout the day their BIM expert, Robert Wagan will be at the booth explaining their new Revit plugin, so check it out. Come stop by booth 707 today to learn more about how ARCAT can save you time and money finding product information for all your projects and like everything ARCAT does completely free.

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Payroll and benefits. I’m just going to let that soak in a little bit. Payroll and benefits, payroll and benefits that makes my spine tingle. Payroll and benefits are hard, especially when you’re a small business like us. You don’t have time to be an expert and things like taxes and regulations and the old school payroll providers, they just don’t get it. They aren’t built for the way that we work today. Gusto is making payroll benefits and hr easy for small businesses. Modern technology does the heavy lifting, so it’s easy for you to get it right. You no longer have to be a big company to get great technology, great benefits and great service for your team and to help support the EntreArchitect podcast. Gusto is offering our listeners an exclusive limited time deal. Listen Up, sign up today and you’ll get three months free. Once you run your first payroll. Just go to EntreArchitect.com/Gusto. Go check them out EntreArchitect.com/Gusto and claim your free three months of payroll processing ARCAT, Freshbooks, and Gusto. Please visit our platform sponsors today and thank them for supporting you, the EntreArchitect community.

Mark R. LePage:           

When you talk about project planning, I mean the whole idea of a plan is to look at the end result and then break it down into pieces and plan it and say this is what’s going to happen when and this is how much we’re going to get paid for that. And so when you have a large project and you have multiple people working on that project, what’s the best way to sort of break down that project into the different roles that we’re in, the different people working on that project? How do we keep track of all of that?

Robert Yuen:               

Yeah, I think like having a good one team culture so that there’s a system in team meetings to kind of stay on top of things, good tools to track deliverables. Of course, great communication tools. I think email is really dated. No one genuinely loves to read and write emails anyway, most of the time the psychology around emails is very formal. I think what’s really important that a lot of new firms that are starting to pick up are internal chat communication as a way to just really stay on top of a project, make communication easy and that really is deformalizing that the email format. My team uses Slack, I love Slack. It allows me to break things down to channels that have topics and then this is how we can keep each other’s, my software development team and their progress on Monograph and my other software development team and their progress on client work. It really keeps me a really great oversight quickly into every project that’s going on.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah, I use, I use Slack as well. I have Slack for many different groups that I’m working with, the entire EntreArchitect academy, the member forum is built on Slack. I use Slack for my architecture firm. So all the communication is done through Slack. We don’t do any email anymore internally. And I use it for my family too. I use it for whenever, you know, my kids and I are doing projects, we organize all our thoughts in our notes and everything in our own family Slack channel. And so  I love Slack. I think it’s a great tool and it’s a great way to communicate. Is Dashboard integrated with Slack or do you just use them as two separate tools?

Robert Yuen:               

Two separate tools. Me and my team are thinking ways to build in communication tools because we think that’s a viable component in any type of project delivery. So we are thinking of ways to include like communication features inside of Monograph. I don’t want to talk too much because I don’t want this to be an advertisement for Monograph, but I can tell you one of our larger ideas for the next five year plan is probably to see if we can start building communication tools outside of your firm too. We want to make sure that we make it simple for you to communicate with the consultants. Architecture in the business of building the buildings goes beyond just architecture, it requires not just a team internally but also your consultants, structural engineer, electrical engineers builder. There’s quite a lot of players and I think this is where the promise of Monograph becomes really interesting for myself. It’s really like, well, one can first problem is can I solve the project delivery in the firm? And then the next problem is, can solve the problem of communicating that project delivery across all teams?

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah, right. I love that it’s so early, you know, because we can sort of help you build it, you know. If we get into the software, actually I’m using it for one of my projects and it’s going to be great to be able to use it and then give you some feedback. As it develops, it evolves, it becomes a more, more refined tool specifically for us who are, who are using it. I agree, I don’t want to dive too deep into it because I don’t want people to think that’s what we’re doing here. We talk about time tracking, we talk about budgeting, we talked about communication. What are some other critical pieces of planning out projects effectively?

Robert Yuen:               

I think one of the largest things is make sure you have some experience in your scoping projects. I don’t take enough conversations that were around like scoping work even before the planning stage because if you cannot skill scope wrong, it really affects everything and you really want to make sure to have a really good idea of how long a project takes. That means you do need to have some experience doing those projects and really understanding the scope and timeline and really to put some effort before the planning and the delivery of a project to really understand well how long is this project going to take? Simple tools might be using Gantt charts, right? Like to really understand and visualize a work. I think generally as architects, we’re all visual professionals, use visuals, sketch. If you don’t want to use a digital tool, use Trace and kind of visualize, well, what’s your timeline going to be? A use calendars. There’s so many ways to kind of visualize the planning process and I think that helps a lot of other design professionals.

Mark R. LePage:           

Scoping is one of those things that many people have many different definitions for that. So when you’re talking about properly scoping out a project, what do you mean by that?

Robert Yuen:               

So for example we build a lot of websites but I can easily scope a website for three months. I can scope a website for two years, really depends on all the features and components. A technique that me and my team do with every lead that’s somewhat complicated is we go to the whiteboard and we figured out how many things we have to build. What are all the moving pieces outside of all the typical ones? So for architecture I think is really standard that there’s always these phases schematic through CA, I think what gets left out is sometimes the oddities of every project, like this one has historical. This one has special zoning issues that might take more time, this one might have complications with its existing condition. So really try and wrap your head around that and that can start to kind of like, well, you know, I initially thought maybe I can do this project in a month, but based now on everything I wrote down, it’s probably going to take three times as long.

And generally there’s three partners, my other two partners are more heavily in the deliverable of work and where I’m more of the more of the manager, I always ask them how long it takes to have a better experience of how long it takes. We’re also close enough where I tend to just double what they tell me. Like, I think that that rule is so arbitrary, but it’s been so key to our success at the agency level. My partner will say it will take me two months, easy, not a problem but it will take them two months if he did it himself and he’s really good and really fast, but we have a team and there’s communications and things always happen here and there. So at the end of the day it takes twice as long.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah. And that comes from experience, right? So scoping is essentially what needs to be done and how is it going to get done. So you break down the project in terms of, like you said, in terms of architecture, most of us are using phases, what happens in each phase and what actually has to be be done in each phase and by being intentional about it and making it part of your process and part of your systems that you do look at every project before you even price it, what do you need to deliver? How are you going to deliver it? How long is it going to take, who’s going to do it and break that all down and schedule and that’s not necessarily schedule it out by date, but how long do these things take and what has to happen? And by doing that, things like what Robert says, you know, special special codes or a special review process or a special detail is going to take more time. And by being intentional about it, you’ll see those early on and you’ll have a more successful project.

Robert Yuen:               

Yeah. From what I’ve noticed, if you spend a little bit of extra time in the beginning of the project, there’s less stress throughout, i’s more predictable, which is always the goal of mine to make things predictable because it was always unpredictable things that are the things that throw you off track. And one of the key things, it’s just something I’ve learned, you know, when we first started, when my listings, I assume that I’m working on it full time. I assume that I’m going to be working 40 hours a week and that’s how I calculate time. Very quickly I learned like, well, I should not do that because I know I don’t have 40 hours to work on that one project. Right? We’re running businesses, we have multiple projects going it’s unrealistic for me to say I can spend 40 hours a week for three months on this phase because that’s not possible so then you have to understand, is this one person in this phase, is the team in this phase, how many hours can I contribute? What’s the realistic, achievable time to accomplish that task? So when you’re scoping, you go from high level phase base, high level tasks to then actionable deliverable things to down to like, well how big is my team to actually produce those results?

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah. And it takes us back to time tracking, which is why time tracking is so important, not only for your team but for yourself. Because you can’t do that without time tracking.

Robert Yuen:               

You can’t. You just don’t know for that project. Are you making $2 an hour or you’re making $300 an hour. Like there’s just, there’s no way. There’s no way for you to be like, well, if I am making $300, there’s definitely room for me to like spread and build a team and, and make the process a little bit more manageable. If you’re working too many hours but your billable rates are super high, then theoretically you can bring on a teammate and, and lower your personal billable hour, but it distresses and make sure that the project is delivered on time.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah. Yeah. That’s some good advice. Before we wrap up, is there anything else that people should be thinking about when they’re planning out their projects or did we catch them all?

Robert Yuen:               

I think planning is such a big topic. We can probably talk all day. There’s so many micro topics, I think the only words of advice is don’t take it lightly. Good planning leads to good projects and at least architects breaking out the stigma of us working 80 hours a week and it’s just poor planning. There’s no reason why as a human being we should be working 80 hours plus to do the work in our profession.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah. I would venture to guess that most of the people listening to us right now don’t plan out their projects. So I’m talking to you who are listening right now, do you plan out your projects? Because I think if you do, you’ll be more successful. If you go through the process of breaking down each project that you do and writing it down and putting it in some format, whether you use a digital tool or you put it in a sketchbook, actually go through the process of planning out the next project and see how much more successful it is. So Robert, thank you very much for  for joining us. Before we go, I want to ask you the one final question that I ask everybody that comes on the show. What is one thing that a small firm architect can do today to build a better business for tomorrow?

Robert Yuen:               

Well, we talked a lot about planning, so let’s flip the script a bit and let’s just say automation. Automation would help any small business and there’s a lot of tools out there to help with that. I’ll just leave you with this. I love Zapier. Zapier is a little tool that connects to other tools, which is great. Meaning like if something happens, I can easily make something else happen and that will take a lot of the stress in terms of just little too many little tiny manual tasks that every principal has to go through.

Mark R. LePage:           

Yeah. Zapier is a great tool. I use Zapier for both my firm and EntreArchitect. That’s a great tool for architects, especially sole practitioners and small firms to go check that out because that will make you more efficient. Things will automatically happen when you trigger one thing, it’ll go through a whole process and you can design these triggers to work the way you want.

So that’s great advice. So, Robert, on the web, it’s Monograph.io. So anybody who wants to go see what’s going on over at Monograph or see what Dashboard is all about. Monograph.io. All over social media. It’s Monograph, so they can just go search Monograph in any of the social media  and you’ll find them. Anything else that you want to point out in terms of sharing? I’m out in the social media. Anywhere else that you are?

Robert Yuen:              

I’m really easy, accessible via email too. You can email me directly at robert@monograph.io.

Mark R. LePage:           

All right. Robert@Monograph.io. We will have all these links in the show notes. Robert, thank you very much for joining us today for sharing your knowledge.

Mark R. LePage:           

Alrighty, so what do you think of that? About that one? What do you think about Robert Yuen’s ideas on project planning and go over to EntreArchitect.com/itunes and go give us a rating and a little bit of a review. I would love to know what you think about this podcast episode and all the others. This is 226, episode 226. You can even share this link with a friend. EntreArchitect.com/episode226. Go do that. Go put it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Go share it with a friend through email. Go let them know because that’s how we do this. That’s how we’re gonna do this. That’s how we’re going to change the world. One architect at a time through the EntreArchitect podcast with you and your help. Go do it right now and while you’re at it, go visit Archispeak podcast and Inside the Firm podcast, while you’re over there at itunes, go subscribe to those two podcasts as well.

You won’t regret it. Two very, very good art architecture based podcasts, Archispeak podcast, and Inside the Firm podcast. Did you hear that Alex Gore from Inside the Firm podcast recently launched a new digital course that teaches you how to get up and running on Revit fast and easy. It’s the course that we’ve all been waiting for. It’s the course that we’ve been looking for. Those of us who have current are currently running CAD and want to move to BIM, and this is it. Now’s your chance. Alex recorded about 40 short tutorial videos. They’re are about 40. Give or take, sort of short little tutorials, walking step by step, holding our hand on how to set up families, how to set up sheets, how to get started using Revit for our own projects fast. The course is called Revit Rocketship, you can learn more and you can sign up and you could support EntreArchitect all at the same time by using our affiliate link EntreArchitect.com/revit, pretty easy to remember. When you sign up, they’ll throw us a little bonus and we can continue doing what we’re doing. So thank you Alex for supporting EntreArchitect and the EntreArchitect podcast. The EntreArchitect community on Facebook. It is the most interactive, most supportive, most encouraging, most positive place on the Internet. For small firms. Come join us. It’s free over at Facebook. It is awesome. EntreArchitect.com/group and don’t forget the learn how to earn that elusive 20 percent profit. We can do it. We can do it together. Download the free course profit for small firm architects EntreArchitect.com/freecourse. That course is free and it will teach you everything you need to know about how to set up a financial system for your firm.  And earn that 20 percent profit EntreArchitect.com/freecourse.

My name is Mark R. LePage and I am an entrepreneur architect. I encourage you, I do,vI beg you to go build a better business so you can a better architects because when you build the better business, the whole profession gets better. That’s why I want you to go do that not only for you and your family and your friends and your firm, but for all of us. Because when we go build the better firm, each one of us build a better firm, the profession thrives. So go do it. Love, learn, share what you know. Thanks for listening. Have a great week.

 

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