Hey, architect nation, Enix Sears here and in today's architect CEO update you'll discover the number one secret to marketing your architecture firm. Right now I'm standing on the bank of the canal in London on a little work occasion so which basically means that I'm working while I'm also here on vacation for a month with my family and yesterday was a particularly long day. You probably know how these go. I was sitting. I didn't even leave the home because we have strong internet there even though I'd rented an office I decided to work out of the home for the day. And so literally for nine hours I'm sitting there at my desk in front of my little laptop and you know it can be very tiring doing that so by the end of the day I was feeling quite tired one of the go out and get something to eat. Yesterday had a lot of things to do I I led the dream practice accelerate a coaching call that we lead every Thursday had the free and formula call that I do with Scott Bibi also on Thursdays and so it about about nine o'clock at night I finally decided to head out and try to look try to scrounge up something to eat and what was remarkable as I'm walking down the stairs a little flat in which we're staying with and I open up that door and I step out onto the street so we're on upper street which is an islington which is a fantastic area just restaurant after restaurant after restaurant a lot of hustle and bustle and as I stepped out there and I looked around suddenly I realized that I've been London right so I'm from California and in California you're not going to find anything older than a hundred years and then but here in London you have such an amazing city fabric of old buildings of interesting textures of sounds of sites of restaurants and people and so I was just overwhelmed by this pure tapestry of people of buildings of night life and it really caused me to reflect and I had this just this feeling of gratitude in my heart that I have the opportunity to be over here have a flexible work schedule and that we're able to take our kids over here and experience a different country and I thought you know what it's interesting how how easy it is to get so focused on what we're doing at the moment that we lose the big picture of what's happening around us it's so easy to focus on what we're doing at the moment that we lose the big picture of what's going on around us so I took about 15 minutes and I walked up and down upper street just looking at the different restaurants just absorbing all the sites and the sounds of the city now having said that I would say that having living here permanently that might get a little overwhelming I kind of do like my my little town and by site where I live where it's nice and quiet we can go to the mountains we can go to the rivers we can go to the beach but it's nice here to be on vacation again experience that tapestry so how does this relate to marketing and architecture firm and what is the secret to truly marketing a firm well it's it's not Instagram although that works and I have I met a lot of architects that are absolutely doing amazing things on Instagram it's not social media it's not taking on advertisements it's not doing a CO it's not paying for ads or paying for some lead generation service it's simply this getting out and meeting with people building real relationships now this is no surprise to you you probably knew this already but here's the thing I know working as an architect it is much too easy to do what's comfortable and familiar and to leave the things that may not be as comfortable and familiar so what ends up happening is we end up looking at the computer just working at all the things that are in front of us right now instead of taking time to get out and to meet with other people to see other people so I'm here on this on this this canal it's pretty amazing right now if you're listening this obviously you can't see it but behind me they have these these boats that are on the canal and it reminded me of the the the autobiography of Richard Branson how I lost my virginity great book on entrepreneurship talks about when he was originally starting his tower records first first very first store he lived with a girl on one of these little canal boats and very low cost living and it talks about how he'd get out every day and go to work so again we see this principle of play that to make things happen to be able to get out of the boat you know to be able to make things happen to be able to build his entrepreneurial journey he had to get out of the boat and he had to make something happen if you would have just stayed there on the boat virgin records never would have happened so what I would have you consider today is how can you work networking time into your schedule and it's important that that when you're networking you're not just going to groups of architects because I see this too often where it's it's too easy to go to people and associations and groups where we all feel comfortable but what can you do to be able to get out there and meet people that would help you increase your network increase your increase your contacts and potentially get you the kind of product you want to work on so by the time you listen to this I might have already released an episode with an architect Matthew Rosenberg of Amrade he has done some amazing things is a small little architecture from based out of Los Angeles and what Matthew's done over the past three years is absolutely incredible he's grown his practice from about two people to I think right now about 16 people in his practice he's doing he just did this amazing hillside home and I think it's in Beverly Hills to spec home with the developer absolutely incredible it's like it's like 10,000 square feet or something you know all these glass walls looking out over Los Angeles he's doing projects all of his he just got a hospitality project he's going after a project up in Canada his homeland up in Calgary I believe it is and it was remarkable to talk to him and to see what was his secret to being able to grow his architecture firm so quickly because he actually is not even American citizens from Canada and so for the first entire year working here he couldn't even he couldn't even work professionally he had he said he spent the first year just kind of doing yoga and going on jogs and stuff like that but when he finally did work how is he able to go from zero network in Los Angeles we had a bit of a network because I think he went to Syar but how is he able to go from that to building a practice with 17 people that is that's profitable that's making money and that's actually even probably more importantly for a lot of you and a lot of architects is actually doing fantastic very very interesting projects as a matter of fact I think he just they had just completed a project that they wanted to do some some little housing units up in Yosemite which is really cool very forward thinking very cool looking project but here's the key when I asked him how he's able to do that he said it was because he took time out to network and this guy was persistent so he would literally fly to New York specifically to meet with the record developers that he had hand picked out so he'd identified them he saw that they they're kind of vision aligned with the kind of work he wanted to do and he literally would fly to New York specifically to just meet with them in person and basically you could call it pester you could call it be persistent but he would just you know talk to them again and again and again until they gave him time and then once they gave him time then he would he would give him a little pitch about the services he could offer so again our parable today is just like I was stuck in my room all day long and maybe feeling I was definitely feeling overwhelmed and feeling a little bit low energy kind of down you know it helps to get out it helps to build those relationships because the people are out there and you know this you know this because you know the architects that are winning lots of great fantastic projects the clients that I work with are being able to up level their projects it's all because they have a method they have a technique they have a framework for getting out meeting people forming those relationships because architecture truly is a game of trust so that's all for today now if you haven't already got my free video go or go check out dreampracticewebinar.com you'll learn on their tactics and strategies not only for marketing your firm and winning the kind of production you want to work on but also how to basically set up a self-managed firm so you can focus on doing more of the work you love now if you're listening on the podcast and you don't actually watch these videos go subscribe on youtube I'm standing in this little square where these two canals meet right here and there's this very interesting building behind me here don't know who designed that that's quite quite fascinating as always this is Enixir signing off for today and reminding you carpe diem sees the day