Well, it’s been a minute. So, where have I been? I had to break away from doing any blog post, social media post, or anything that didn’t involve production work for my projects over the last two years. Why? Around mid-July 2022, I had a meeting that would ultimately change the direction of my company for the future in a good way. My former employer, an architect who was 92 at the time, decided that he wanted to step away from running a firm but still wanted to work. He called me up, saying he wanted to meet with me to discuss something. So, we met up, and what he proposed took me by surprise. He wanted to work for me and bring his clients to my firm. Out of all the architects who had worked for him over his 60-plus-year career and had firms of their own, which were more established and proven than mine, he came to me first. This shocked and humbled me because my firm was just over a year old. We discussed the proposal further, and ultimately, I agreed to take him and his clients on. Little did I know that that decision would help get my business moving in a way I thought wouldn’t happen for several more years and opened a new niche for me. Those clients were federal housing authorities.
I have worked on federal housing authority projects before under my former employer, so I was familiar with how things worked. However, there would be a learning curve that I was not expecting. Before, I was an architect who did production work and made minor decisions when necessary. Now, I was the architect who made all the decisions. There were a lot of new requirements and processes that I had to come up to speed with. I had to adjust and change most of my processes because I was dealing with public bidding instead of negotiated contracts with private funding. I had to add in or change how I documented information. I had to create a new set of specifications in my library specific to those projects. I was going out to job sites more often to make observations. My time became limited, and I had to focus on building my business with this new client base. Which, for me, was a situation where I wasn’t going to complain. I had work and was happy to have plenty of it.
At the beginning of this venture, I admit I got frustrated that I didn’t have time to focus on what I had planned to do when I started my firm. Write about what I do, seek out projects that align with my initial vision, and post stuff on social media to build a better presence. Some days, I wondered if I had made the right decision, even though it was great for my bottom line. I didn’t see at first how this work would help me with my original vision of my firm. Only now do I see how it has helped enhance my practice in ways I never thought about initially. I was able to find ways to streamline specific processes and standardize a lot of details, notes, specifications, and templates. I was able to refine my process for building code and product research. Apply new software and hardware to my practice that I wouldn’t have had a chance to experiment with before. I got more practice dealing with unexpected situations during a project because of how these housing projects typically go. Especially when it's renovation work for multiple living units. All those things helped me become a better architect and improve my business. Plus, these projects allow me to take on projects that align more with my original vision because they provide me with what I need to run the business.
Now, how does this all play into writing and posting about what I do and the frequency of those posts? My goal now is to use the past two years away as a basis for my new posts. Talking about things I learned, new tools and techniques that have shaped my processes, and the challenges I faced as an architect. Hopefully, with a little more frequency than every two years.
Main Image by Saad Salim on Unsplash
