Ep 204: Character Development Revisited

This is Life of an Architect, a podcast dedicated to all things architecture with a little bit of life thrown in for balance. Starting something new is usually less about knowing what you were doing and more about being just uncomfortable enough with the way things are to try something different. That was more or less how this podcast began. With a website that had grown beyond the usual creative outlet it was supposed to be, a schedule that no longer seemed interested in personal boundaries. And the vague belief that talking into microphones might somehow be easier than writing another blog post. The first episode was called Character Development, which at the time sounded like a reasonable introduction to who we were and what we thought the show might become. More than 200 episodes later, it feels less like a title and more like evidence. Welcome to Episode 204. Character Development Revisit. Today's episode is generously brought to you a support from construction specialties. Make our architectural building products designed to master the movement of buildings, people, and natural elements. Welcome to the Life of an Architect podcast on Bob Borson. And I'm Andrew Hawkins. And today we are going to be revisiting the very first topic ever recorded here on Life of an Architect, which was titled Character Development. And at that time, that episode was mostly an introduction just to who we were, why the podcast existed, and what we thought we might talk about if this thing somehow lasted more than a few episodes. Since we, and even the we has changed, but since we are now more than 200 episodes in, which feels both impressive and mildly irresponsible. I thought it would be worth going back to that first conversation and asking what we thought the show was going to be, what it actually became, and what it probably reveals about us now. So the first obvious question we got to get into was, okay, Andrew, since you weren't actually part of that first podcast episode. Yeah. I'm curious what you thought the show was before you joined it. Because you were familiar with the website. Oh, yeah. Familiar with you? Yes. And with me. I only made it 11 episodes before you joined. Yeah. I know. Had you listened to any of those first 11? I think a couple, but not many. I was being childish, maybe he's a little, but heard about it to be honest. But I got it when you explained the idea of the premise behind it. You just that we were maybe too similar to be doing this. And that was the reason for the choice. But I thought I was going to be more of a, I don't know how you want to call it, mentor, teacher, where it was going to be like you were explaining things and landed giving this inexperience, maybe position or understanding of things and it was going to be that dialogue of old master and young student kind of thing. Oh, well, you know what I mean? No, neither one of us were old back then. Trust me. But yeah, that's kind of what I thought. And that was how you explained it to me a little bit in what it was. Well, there were two sides to that really. So part of it, yes, you're exactly right. There was the, I'd had 20 plus years experience, Lane and Williams, who was, I guess, technically he was my employee at the time was fresh out of school. And so we had different tinted glasses to talk about anything. If we were going to talk about architectural salaries, I had opinions. He didn't have much of one yet. And not because he doesn't have opinions, but he didn't have much to work with at that point from an experienced standpoint. Yeah. But the other side of that part of the reason Lane was there. And I actually went back to listen to the very first episode I did it today before recording this episode. And even in that episode, I kind of mentioned part of the reason Lane had became a consideration for that first episode was he and I were doing a project that was about a four and a half hour drive away from the office. And we would do a day trips. So we would drive down there, have like two hours worth of meetings and then drive back. I spent a lot of time in the car with that dude. Yeah. And finally made the decision to do this. I'm talking to this guy a lot as it is now. He's not like me in terms of experience or what he's been exposed to. He's geographically convenient to me. Yeah. Because that was a different at that time as well. Yeah. Because now, for example, even when you came in joined, you would come up here and we would try to record multiple episodes over a weekend because we were face to face. Yeah. Yeah. And now unless we're at a convention or a conference or something, we just do them over Zoom. And we just look at each other on the screen. We look lovingly into each other's eyes over Zoom. Yeah. That's one of the big changes was that because it was a big deal early on. I remember it was planning weekends like once every month or so to go, all right, we got a lot of got five this week. Yeah. And you remember sitting in the front room, my house and we had boom mics and stuff. Yeah. Oh yeah. And the meeting was because we weren't isolated from one another. So like my audio was in your mic and vice versa. That was much harder back then. Yes. I was trying to remember the other day. If we continued that up until COVID or had we given it up before then, I don't actually know. I can't remember. Can't remember either if we were doing it and then he stops because of COVID. It was never went back. I can't remember. You know, I bet if I look up Andrew Bennett, because that was one of the very last ones. Oh, that we did it at your house. Yeah. Here we go. Let's get physical. Yeah. We were in person for this one and that was 2019. And that's when we were talking about physical models. Yeah. And I think if that wasn't the last time that had to be pretty close to one of the last times we did it, we might have made it another year if I'm being generous. But what about that would have been it because the pandemic was March 2020. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So anyway, in some ways that made life easy, but it had an impact on our chemistry a bit because you would come up here and we'd have a good time. Yeah. In addition to the work part of recording these podcasts, we went out and we'd eat and we'd go to bars and we'd like hang out and hang out as friends. And now 90% of the time I see you, it is over Zoom and we're working. Yeah. I know. Right. And it just kind of changes the nature of the chemistry a little bit. But there's a lot of meat on this bone and I don't want to be a reminiscing type episode as much as those are fun and easy to do. So I broke this into a couple of different sections. It's not as easy as section 1, 2, 3, 4. I think there might be more than that. But I thought the first question we should kind of get into was what was episode 1 trying to do? So, you know, and I start calling them all episode 001 so that it felt like if you joined in your own episodes 29, zero 29 made it sound like well, there's a lot more. There's more. Yes. That you were going to make it to 100. That's right. And it also helps with if I start sorting stuff and I go, of course, give me episode 1, I get like one then 100 and 100 and all that kind of like a business. Yeah. Yeah. Episode 1 was an extremely straightforward episode. It was, hey, introduce ourselves, which was Landon Williams and myself. Express the goal that the podcast had, which was that it was intended to remain a creative outlet. And as the blog site at that time was still growing in popularity, the amount of time required to maintain it was becoming more and more of a grind and it just started to take the fun out of it quite honestly. I think I estimated at that time that I was spending about 15 hours a week just responding to emails, which is both a blessing and a burden. I mean, it's really special to have people reach out to you and ask for your help and guidance. Yeah. What an honor that is. But it was also a responsibility that exceeded what I thought was going to happen. Yeah, it wasn't anticipated byproduct of the whole thing. Yeah, there's a scale to it that I didn't understand. And I think at its peak, like 350,000 people a month were coming through the website. And you go, just 1% of that is a full time job responding to just the comments and the emails and the yeah, yeah. And it just, I already work a lot. And it just, it took what was a creative outlet, made it a job. It's what it felt like. Yeah. The other thing, part of the reason what Episode 1 was trying to articulate was I wanted to get out of my comfort zone a little bit again, which is a reason I started the website in the first place. Yeah. And I felt like I'm just getting better doing some already know how to do. So when I got out of my comfort zones, I wanted to learn the technology. I had never even listened to a podcast until about two weeks before I started this one. At least I'd been listening to this song. So I was a head of you on that for. Yeah. Now in a very kind of gross way, I will say I listened to podcasts that I was a participant. Yeah. And I'll probably do the performance anxiety reasons rather than the potentially obvious and narcissistic reason like you curious, did I say something stupid? You were listening to make sure you didn't sound like an idiot. Yeah. Yeah. Not that you wanted to hear yourself talk, but you wanted to make sure that you didn't sound like a dummy. Yeah. That's right. Before I shared it everywhere and I say something crazy. Yeah. Exactly. So here it is. It's eight years later. And I can tell you, I still don't listen to podcasts. And I will say that I have a hard time trying to listen to a conversation and use my brain for something else when I'm working. That's how I am. I used to listen a lot because I was driving time. - Yeah. - Even when this started, I spent hours and hours in the road. That part of my life has changed, and I don't do that much anymore, and so I don't listen to podcasts, 'cause I'm like, "You know, if I'm working, I don't even listen to music that has words." Like, I don't even want that. - Yeah, you're soundtrack guy. - Yeah, 'cause it distracts me, 'cause I'll start singing the words, and not thinking about what I'm doing. - Yeah, well, you know, I'm not a words guy to any song. I don't know that I should be proud about it, but I don't think I know the words really to any song. I mean, "Happy Birthday." - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I don't know the words to any song, and I will tell you, if I turn on music, which I turn on the music all the time, I actually stop hearing it. It just disappears. And it becomes the thing that blocks out everything else, which allows me to focus on what my frontal cortex needs to be focusing on, or maybe it's your frontal cortex that's listening to the music, so the rest of your brain can do its job. - This your brain can do whatever. - Yeah. - I don't even listen to podcasts when I drive. I listen to a lot of audio books. - Hmm. - Yeah. - I listen to audio books, and I do that because I need to turn my brain off at night. So I listen to audio books to go to sleep. And so I set the timer for 15 minutes, and when I wake up in the morning, I know I just need to rewind 15 minutes, 'cause I don't think I make it a minute when I do that. So anyway, I don't listen to podcasts really at all. But I did listen to some in the beginning, 'cause I was just trying to learn essentially how to bubble diagram what a podcast is and how it works. - Yeah. - And I spent some time in that first episode describing the manner that the idea was to critically think what do we think is important? That was kind of the premise. So when we're thinking about topics, and I will tell you, I rattled off a bunch of topics in that episode one, like, oh, here's things that we can talk about. And they're so mind-bogglingly generic. We talked about all these things in some way. For example, salary. I've talked about salary a few times. And it's actually why the life of an architect website begins and had to do with an article I read from a guy that was complaining about architects not getting paid enough, which is an argument I can't stand. I'm not saying it's not true. I just don't like the argument. What we do is hard, so we deserve to get paid a lot. I don't like that argument. - Yeah. - Architectural photography was on that list. And we did one. It was a fun conversation, but it was like, nobody cared. Nobody had any interest in architectural photography. - Yeah. - Sketching. I listed sketching as a topic. And I go, that's so generic. - Yeah. - You know, it did not provide a lot of value. Computer software. - But we've hit it a couple of times, you know? - Well, yeah, 'cause you try to say, well, let's make it a little bit more specific. - Yeah. - Just computer software is so generic. What does that actually mean? - Yeah. - Architecture school is a topic. It's more like a category, not a topic. - Yeah, and these are like headers, not actual show topics. - Yes. - Yeah. - That's something that has evolved substantially. And not only in the specificity of what we try to talk about, but the idea that when we talk about something, it's usually at a critical thinking exercise to clarify our own thinking. That's what you and I were talking about at the start of today's episode before we hit record, was this wasn't ever supposed to be two people getting together to talk about the answers to a question. It was really two guys talking about what's the question. - Yeah. - And trying to clarify how you might go about coming to some conclusion while trying to answer that question. - We do talk about what we think, our answers to those questions are, but I don't think we're ever, I don't wanna say overly committed, but we don't ever, at least not intentionally. I mean, it may sound that way sometimes, I think, but our goal is not to sound like we have answers, but to really just talk about the questions and what should be considered by anyone who's trying to answer this question. - I used to get criticized for saying things as if they were true. And I said, well, I say things that I believe to be true. - Yeah. - And you're presenting as if it's fact. I go, no, I'm presenting as if I believe it. - Yeah. - Yeah, it's a difference. - There is a difference, but they're like, how would anybody know the difference? And I go, just means I'm open to changing my mind. Is all that mean? - No, no. - Like, I don't need to be right. I believe that I'm right, and that's why I've formed the opinions that I have, but if somebody presents me something that caused me to rethink it, I'm 100% gonna rethink it. I've changed my mind constantly. - Yeah. - I think that's one of the curial assets that architects tend to have. It's like we can believe something to be one way and then go through a process and come out the other side with a different opinion. - Yeah, yeah, I agree, I agree. - So, one of the questions that I had on here, I know you thought, oh, Bob, that's your thing to answer. And I actually go, no, Andrew, this is your thing to answer. But the question is, what changed when the co-host dynamic changed? And your point was, how would I know? - Yeah. - I wasn't there. The reason why I don't think that's the right way to look at it is because when Lano's on the show, and I love that guy, I basically said, this is what we're doing and he did it. You and I were always more collaborative in what we were doing or what we were gonna talk about than Lano and I ever were because we're of the same vintage in a lot of ways. Or the way I described it, we both have the amount of road wear on our tires. - Yeah, yeah. But we've got enough experience to draw from to either agree on certain things or see things from the same perspective or have different experiences on the same questions or the same topics, but from a different perspective. Still like you say, enough of an experience and experiences under the belt to approach those things. Collaborally, but sometimes from opposite sides or not the same side. - Yeah. - Well, it shows up in your other release favorite post, which was the Convention Wives post. One of the things that I always said was really great about experiencing a convention with someone that you have a relationship with is that you can both be in the same room. You can hear the same words and you can get a completely different experience or equal sign out of it. And one of the things I always enjoyed was, I'd come out and go, well, that was a waste of time, they didn't say anything. You're like, oh, I thought XYZ and I go, oh, I completely miss that. - Yeah. - But we have enough experience with one another that I didn't dismiss your opinion as folly. - Yeah. - Go, it was stupid and you just don't realize how stupid it was. - Yeah. - Or you don't know enough or whatever. - If you're gonna have an opinion, yeah, it was worth listening to. And it makes a difference. And I think that's one of the things that changed most profoundly when you got brought on because you also had opinions about topics. - Yeah. - And how we have a story art go through a topic. - Yeah. - So yeah, that was a big one. Not a super in depth question, but I think, I don't think the podcast would be what it is now, despite the fact that I talk a lot. And then I talk over people a lot. I don't think it would be the same thing without you. And I'm like, I don't have like, oh, I'm curious what it would be like. But it was like, it just would have been a different monster altogether. - The different show. - For sure. - Yeah. - I do think that it would have been a different direction, for sure, at things state the way they work. Even as you both progressed through your careers and it was still that alternate perspectives, I think it still would have been different than it. - Okay, well, let me throw this out there. I think just the execution would have been different because part of the reason you came on board was the realization on how much work it actually takes to do a podcast. The way that we both agree it ought to be done. - Yeah. - And I think that if you're not at certain stage in your life, I don't know how, like if I was a 20 something, you know, just starting out dating what would eventually become my future wife, who would have the time dedicated to do this? - Or who would want to have the time? - Yeah. - It's a different stage of your life to place a kind of value on this as a process. That part I get, and we've talked about it a little bit before of, as you get further along in your career, you start to recognize the importance of somehow trying to give back. And if that actually does have value, you're a young person. No fans, but you just might not have that as a priority yet. It's not part of your sphere of thinking most things. - Yeah. Well, the payoff typically is so far downstream as to create an environment where people think it's not worth it. And the truth is it probably would be worth it, but you got to stick with it for a, I mean, think about it. I had the website for eight years, eight and a half years before the podcast started. And so I didn't start with zero audience on day one of the podcast. I started with a humongous audience right out of the gate. - Yeah. - And there are times when we talk to people and they'd say, "Oh, I got 800 people through the website this month." And I go, "Good God, why are you doing this?" That's not worth it. - Yeah. - Which is kind of a gross thing to say because the point was never to drive traffic. The point was creative value. And they're still scratching that itch. I'd always kind of chastise myself for being so myopic when I would think that. - Yeah. - It's really hard to put this much work in and you think, well, nobody even knows. I feel like I would find a different creative outlet than one that was on the timetable like this is. Like we have deadlines. Now we put them on ourselves. - Yeah. - But. - Well, we put them on ourselves, but I mean also, I mean, now we have obligations. This depends on that level. We have obligations to other people. And if you don't, yeah, I mean, you've got more room to let things slide or I also think, hey, because of those obligations, but be because you and I both, if we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it. That's kind of how we are as people. - Well, I think it says something about your character. You do what you say you're gonna do. - Yeah. - That means something to me. - More from life of an architect in just a moment. - Jennifer Mahalski. is a business development manager construction specialties, bringing over 20 years of experience in business development with the healthcare construction industry. A proud alumna of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Jennifer plays a key role in developing and implementing strategic growth initiatives for construction specialties healthcare product lines. She works directly with health systems to establish healthcare standards and collaborates closely with sales support teams to address the evolving needs of healthcare design individuals. Hi Jennifer, thanks for joining us today. We have an exciting topic to get into. Architects will love this one. You ready for this? I am ready. Wonderful. Yes. So we're going to be talking about the future of analytics, which everybody loves. I love Andrew Loves. Yes. Everybody loves. So popular right now. So popular. We're going to talk about analytics and this is specific to healthcare facilities. So what role does analytics play in improving staff efficiency? So when we're looking at staffing analytics, it can help to identify best practices of other staff members by doing this that it can lead to efficiencies that can be shared and ultimately it leads to better patient care. So how can this analytics driven insight influence patient room design? So when we're watching spend on facility maintenance needs, it can help to identify products or equipment that have a high or low frequency of replacement. So this can help to identify high performance products or finishes that would be worth replicating in future renovations or in future construction projects. Sounds reasonable. So how does the analytics that are captured affect the way architects think about space planning and interaction? So I'm going to circle back to a concept of repetitive design and standardization. So all of that actually starts before a single hospital or tower is built. A lot of times we actually look back to the corporate level of a hospital chain. And we're looking at the spend from across the board. A lot of times they're going to align with GPO partners and they're going to do some standardization with suppliers. With this does is it can help to reduce overall costs on their projects. It can help in terms of simplifying purchasing. They're invoicing as well as the purchase orders that are cut through that healthcare corporation. So what does this mean for the architect and the designers? Number one, I'm going to say it's going to it helps with alignment with vendor partners and that can improve delivery and lead times delivery and lead time improvement equals the reduction in a construction schedule. It leads to occupancy permits granted earlier doors open to support the community faster and the treatment of patients sooner and ultimately the hospital begins to generate revenue faster. And ultimately the results of this is you end up with a happy client that is happy with the architect and the designer that was hired and happy clients equal a positive reputation and future business with that firm. You know what? Really? That's why we're all here. Yeah. Everybody wants that. That sounds great. I mean, it really comes down to this business. Yes. Jennifer, thank you for joining us to explore how construction specialties is helping connect data, performance and product strategy in ways that support smarter, more effective environments. As always, your insight and the clarity at which you talk about these things is really appreciated. Thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks so much. Here's the next question. This one was a fun one in the sense that it almost wasn't fun at all, but it makes it fun. It's like watching a terrible movie, right? Like the movie's terrible, but it almost makes it fun because it's so terrible. Yeah. So one of the things that I had on here was I wanted to talk about what we both misunderstood about podcasting, about audience, about editing, finding a rhythm, preparation, the chemistry. Yeah. I'll kick it off just generically by saying I misunderstood almost everything about podcasting at the beginning, which is probably the proper way to start something that eventually becomes a regular part of your life. Mm-hmm. Yeah. When I first started this, I thought the hard part would be the technology, what microphones to use, the recording software, editing, uploading it, having it up. Yeah, adding software. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. It was a little mechanical things that make you wonder how civilization got this far without one person killing another. Yeah. That stuff mattered, but it was not the thing that made the podcast the work. No. The hard part was learning how to have a conversation that had enough direction to be useful, but not so much structure that it sounded like two people reading our own pamphlets at each other. Yeah. I agree about all the other things, but I think the other structure that works a little bit is you and I are a little bit different in the way that we approach these things, which I think is helpful. And what I mean by that is I think in not to this is good or bad, but I mean, we have a different approach to this. You really want to nail everything down and get it all worked out ahead of time. You almost want to have everything done before we have the conversation, which is fine. That's a way to do it. But I'm almost the opposite of that where I tend to come in and just, I'm seeing my pants for almost everything in your core. Yeah. I mean, now we're doing the research oriented topics, but normal things. And I think if we were both doing either one of those, we would not still be here to be quite honest. Yeah, I think there's some truth to that. I think you're right about that. If we were both like you, then it would sound like we were just reading our own pamphlets almost to a certain extent. Yeah. And if it was both like me, then it would gone off the rails so long ago that it wouldn't ever, you know, we wouldn't have made it here. Yeah. But I think there's that balance of our, of our different personalities where we have, where our differences are that make it work and make it seamless. Like you say, it's more of an active conversation and not of like, well, we're reading everything and you just wrote down, you're searched all this to the end degree, but we're having a conversation. And I think that that works to make it at least something for other people. Okay. Speaking of other people, I also misunderstood that the podcast audience would not just be an extension of the website audience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think early on, I imagined people were mostly coming for the topic that we were talking about, whether it's salary or sketching in some form, architecture school, firm size, you know, whatever the topic happened to be for that episode. The topic matters a lot. But I think people who listen to us more than once stay because they recognize that we're thinking through it in the same way that maybe they might be thinking through it. So it's almost like they're able to be in the room in part of a conversation like I get that comment a lot from people, especially like small practitioners or single practitioners. Yeah. Yeah. Like sometimes they might feel a little disconnected and they're looking to have be a part of something. Yeah. They're getting it from their local AIA or some other organization, but they can listen to, and this is also, we do long format. And I don't mean like three hours. I mean, we pick one topic and we talk about just that one topic for the entirety of the show. So if somebody wants to talk about salary, we talk about it long enough, which makes it hard because we have to get in depth. Like I can talk about any subject for 10 minutes. Yeah. That's not the hard part. The hard part is, can you talk about it for 50 minutes and still have it mean something. And so I think the people that have stuck with us, I'm hoping that they recognize that we're going through a similar thought process that they might be going through and they hear us working through something, disagreeing with ourselves, changing our minds or admitting something. I know I do this. Admitting something that I used to believe is either incorrect or only part true. And that is different from just delivering information. Yeah. That's more personal. It's more useful, I guess, when it's delivered in that manner. But I did not. I thought it was just going to be an extension of the website and it wasn't at all. Yeah. The other thing I think about the interesting thing, that idea of topics and what we're talking about and how we get there, I think that's also evolved a lot over the course of the podcast. Because we've evolved a lot. We're in different spots, different jobs, different roles, different things. Because I remember even back when one of the things that we used to talk about, that we don't talk about so much anymore when we have conversations about collaborating is like trying to, because you're at the time and you work in your history, it was all for residential stuff and we did a lot of topics around that. And it was always a consideration because I didn't really do any of that in my career. I wasn't doing that at the time. And that's evolved over time because now that's not where your role is. So the podcast is topics and everything is evolved since then. The next part we get into is, and you can really lean into this one because you do the line share of it. Editing. Yeah. It was another thing that I misunderstood. I find this amazing. And since I have it. I already confessed to listening to episode one this morning. In that episode, I said I did not intend to edit much because real conversations have stumbles in them. And I still mostly believe that. The part that I didn't understand is that editing is not just removing mistakes. It's shaping rhythm. And when we did that 200th episode and I went back and I said, I can barely listen to the first 30. And I did a lot. I don't know how much of the audio editing. I almost do know audio editing now. Andrew does almost all of it. Yeah. But I did more of it back then. And you edit it in like one eighth second snippets all over the place. And I generically tell people we're getting rid of awesomes and you know, but sometimes we're deleting like when I did the QAQC on the last episode, I cut out like four minutes of me just rattling on. Yeah. And I was listening to it. I was like, what am I, I mean, it's interesting, but it's not contributing to the bigger things. I just took it all out. So we tend to shape the conversation a little bit in that editing process. You do really. They were manic when I did it. I cut too much out, too much silence. But the other part is when you edit them now, you're editing it for content and flow, which is part of the reason we've never offloaded this to a different group to do our editing for us. Yeah. Which would be nice, but at the same time, I just, I don't know, I don't know enough, I have enough confidence in someone to be able to do that. Well, they can fix the sound, but they can't fix the words. Fine. I mean, honestly, I think that's something that I'm not trying to pat myself with a back, but a little bit, I think that my skill level in that is evolved a great deal over the course of eight years. Much more confident and better at it than I used to be. And I think even the pacing and the flow of things I now understand better and have a better ability to make them still seem conversational, even though I'm cutting out the chunks. And honestly, I think most of that actually comes from editing all the ads because those are always cutting out chunks. I'm always having to do a lot of work to make that one minute feel conversational when it was probably a 10 minute, 12 minute conversation. Yes. To try to make it. That's really what's really honed my skills when it comes to making this thing seem more conversational is even though I go out and cut big parts or small parts or whether it's an eight, the second or eight seconds or 80 seconds, that skill is what's involved. Well, I was going to ask you because I felt like the way that I speak or the clarity at which I speak has gotten better over the years because when you listen to yourself talk and you hear all the, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, right. You know, you become more aware of your audible mental pauses. Yes. And as a result, you don't cut out as much words that are just space fillers probably today that you did 100 episodes ago. I would imagine. I don't know that's true. I feel like it would be true. To start extent, well, that was still have our own, I think, idiosyncrancies that happened a lot. And I'm just over time been able to realize exactly what they are in cut them. Yes. I can look for them. You have a few words on phrases that I have a few words in phrases that we always say and I'm always trying to minimize those in our output in the audio. It's maddening. Oh, yeah. I will tell you, I think I edited one a couple episodes ago. I was like, oh my God. I was losing my cool constantly. I was like, I'm more familiar with mine and I'm more forgiving of my own mistakes. I don't think that's a Bob thing. I think that's a human. I think everybody's probably like that. I don't disagree. But it was like at one point, I was like, Andrew said the word like you know, or I don't know what it was. It was probably again. There was one word I thought that you said like 37 times in like 19 seconds. Yes. I don't know what it was, but I was like, oh my God. And then I start thinking, what's my word? I know that I end up saying right? Like I'm looking for a confirmation of what I just said, right? Yes. I try to be cognizant not to say that, but you the lucky listener doesn't have to listen to all this verbal diarrhea because we cut it out. But it is something that I will say that from the editing, the goal was never to make the conversation sound perfect. It still wants to be a live organic thing. But I don't want you to hear me say the word right a hundred times either. Yeah. I think so. I think we also, both of us tend to start down certain directions and change our mind and sit in some, come up in some direction. Those are the kind of things. Yes, they happen in normal conversation, but for the benefit of this audio format, they don't do you any good buy cut those kind of things out. Well, that's a lead right into the next section for this. I mean, not as a brand new topic, but like preparation is something that has changed a little bit over the years. I used to think that being prepared meant knowing what I wanted to say. And now I think it means knowing what kind of conversation I want to try to have. And so I create run sheets. And originally I started run sheets because I prone to telling stories about my stories, about a story that I was telling about some other story. And no one knows what my point was. And I haven't finished any stories. And I forgot what my point. And I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. So I started run sheets for that reason. Yeah. It became very like Roman numeral one subsection A point B subsection three, whatever it was, I mean, I really tried to be prepared because that's kind of who I am. I still do that, but I pull it way back in and I try to go, let's keep it at 5,000 feet to try to have the flow work better. And I don't know how successful I am at doing that quite honestly efforts there. Yeah. It just tells you that eight years and I still don't think I'm where I ought to be. But preparation's a big part of it. I mean, I probably spend as much time. Well, to be fair, if I were to take 100% of the time I spend doing a podcast, probably 50% of it is preparation. 25% of it is recording and 25% is post-production stuff. And that's not including questions and answers and posting and social media. I'm not counting that stuff. I'm just saying. Yeah. I got ready to today's conversation. I put a run sheet together. I have a trail of crumbs to keep me on my path and know where I'm going and what I talked about and what was my point supposed to be. I have that. But it's different than what it used to be. It's not as set in stone now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I think also those things help give us a gauge, putting that together gives us a gauge of can we do it? If we've only got two sub categories or two title parts for the episode, it's probably not enough. Yeah. So they're formative in a way of giving us a guide, but also kind of helping us determine whether or not we can make it or making us realize we need to limit it. So if you end up with what we've got on this guy, 82 talking points on this, maybe we should figure out which of the six or five most important because otherwise it's going to be forever. I still think it's funny that every time we think, oh, there's not enough to talk about, we still get there. We still get there. No matter what. So. And even then, okay, the museum one, I realized I got on you at one point about and you're taking too long. I know. And then only to hear that I took like, yep, twice as long to make my first one. I know. I'm well aware of that. But what happens is like, even right now, fun for the listeners, I don't know where this comment will fall in terms of minutes and seconds in the final episode. Yeah. But I can tell you we're at the 40 minute, 22nd mark, something like that. And I can look at how much I have in my run sheet and go, we either need to speed it up or we need to stretch it out. I can kind of get a good idea because we're going to record about an hour's worth of stuff to end up with 50 minutes worth of finished stuff. So once I do music intros and outros and ads and that kind of stuff, our goal is to end up around an hour. Yeah. And this tells me and on that museum one, everything was hunky, Dory and we're like, we're 30 minutes in and we've done three. Yeah. And it tells you, okay, you being Bob need to move it along a little bit faster. And I came to that conclusion when you were doing yours. Yeah. Exactly. As you as per you, at least I'm good. Oh, look, I'm owning up to it. So, but that's when you have the time to know, does it? Because when you're talking, you're not really looking at that. At least I don't. But I don't look at time until I'm not talking and then I start looking at the top. Yeah. There's some true to that. You're going. This is too slow. This is too slow. Yeah. The for sure. So the last little bullet point I did have for this section and this is a big one. It's kind of understanding or appreciating the value of it. We mentioned it a little already, but was chemistry. I always felt like chemistry was just two people who got along. Yeah. Because we clearly are two people that get along. Yeah. That is part of it, but that's not enough. Podcast chemistry is timing. It's trust. It's restraint, interruption recovery. And these are all things you're better at than I am. And part is because I wrote down here knowing when to let the other person keep talking because they're getting somewhere. Yeah. Yes, even though we knew each other really well before this started, I do think that we have grown together in these conversations. They'll be able to have it better and better for this format. I think I don't know that we talk like this when we're not doing this, but with clothes. It's still the same. But like you say, giving each other enough time to work through things or to get to the point. And I remember when we first started, it was always troubled because I do some pretty long pauses in the way that I speak and that was always your opportunity to go in there and start talking again. Yeah, I'm like he's done. You're like I was done and I was not and that took time to learn, but I think now we're pretty good at it as long as the internet keeps us up and we're not. You don't have those kind of troubles. It works out much better. You know what the podcast doesn't let you do is it doesn't let you conveniently talk over someone else at the same time because you can be talking and I can make a joke in real life. In your point and my joke can land in both work. It doesn't work on podcast audio format because now I'm just talking over you or you're talking over me or it's audio garbage is what it is. So it's almost like you have to make your joke. Take a second, wait for audience reaction. Yeah, it's just different. So and that's still tough. There are still times because I feel like I'm always the one making wise crack that I have to wait for a pause to make a wise crack and sometimes I have to let them go because you just keep talking and I'm like man that was a good one but I got to hang on to it. I know. I know. I don't want you to have it. And I will also confess there are times when you make jokes on the podcast that I don't catch when we're talking because I'm too busy trying to make my point. I know that I'm not really focusing on what you're because I'm like I got to just I'm only halfway through this sentence and you drop a funny joke. I know. I'll tell you with something later I'll listen to it and I go that's not actually what you're saying at all. It's just yeah, it's hard. I know I would challenge anybody to record yourself having an in-depth conversation with anybody for an hour and go back and listen to it and you go now I nailed every bit of that. Yes, exactly. It just seems profoundly difficult. So for me, that's carried out beyond these conversations that we have into conversations with real people, not that you're not a real person, but you know what I mean outside of the podcast. Sure. To take a little bit of those lessons that I've learned from doing this into those things. Yeah, absolutely. So I have two kind of chunks left and the next chunk that I have, which I thought was a big one and it is what still feels true as to why we think the podcast is worth recording. Like why are we still doing it? Why does this have value? In my notes, it was hard to answer, but it wasn't hard to answer. So I wrote the idea was basically what still feels true is that the podcast gives us a place to think out loud about the profession in a way that feels honest. It's not perfect. It's slightly prepared but not overly prepared because it hopefully it's a conversation. And it's definitely not polished to the point where all the useful rough bits have been removed because those are the points that make you go, no, wait a minute. Mm hmm. Yeah. Like I agree with what you're going with, but that's not right or I don't agree with that or that's different. And I think that architecture can be a strange profession because everyone seems to have opinions about what matters, but most of those conversations happen in rooms where people are either trying to sound smarter than they are or they're talking just because they want to contribute to the meeting and I can fire it. Yeah. So how do you have an in-depth conversation? Like we said it before, it's like imagine two architects sitting in a bar or having a beer trying to have a real conversation about something. Yeah. Yeah. So it's all a work in progress. It's like one plus one is two, but when is it not? That's part of the reason why having these conversations out loud, I think we're talking about stuff that everybody's thinking about quite honestly. Let's hope. At least that's what we think. Well, luckily we have numbers to support the fact that. Yeah, no, I know. But I would agree that I think there's value at least for me in still working through some of these things. Even today, I wasn't really sure when we talked about it originally that there would be much to it from my perspective, but as I worked through and thought about different things. It, again, it just helps you formulate the way that you think about things and then be able to hopefully express them in a way that has some value, not just for me, but for other people. Would be nice if it had value for other people, but if you get something from it, box checked. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right. The other thing I think feels true about the podcast is that it creates a record of how our thinking has changed over time. Which honestly, that was part of the original idea. Even if I didn't understand it in the beginning, one because we were talking about different things. But we're documenting a version of professional growth that is less about credentials and more about your judgment and the topics matter. But the real value is often the conversation that comes out of these topics and the disagreements, the rabbit holes, the moment when one of us says something and realizes halfway through that the sentence is either more or less true than we were banking on. Yeah. For sure. And that part feels worth doing. I mean, it's a little hard to go, hey, I'm showing how the sauces is made inside my brain to people. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's funny. The longer that we do this, the more I am okay with some of that originally, the very beginning was not. Yeah. I would hold back quite a bit. Like, no, I'm not. I'm going to be semi-transparent here, but not all the way, but the longer this has gone on. And I don't want to say it's cathartic to a certain sense, but it kind of is to be able to be a little more transparent and just put it out there and people may respond, people may not, but being able to say some of the things out loud, have them there is nice to a certain extent. We still scary, but nice. Sometimes I feel like people listening may know me better than anybody else in my life, which is weird. Yeah, out of friend of mine, his name was Scott. Fitness was matter to him. He liked being in shape. He was an architecture friend of mine. And I was kind of just giving him some admiration for the dedication of what he was doing because it's hard work and you don't really get to take days off. And we were talking about bench pressing like 200 pounds and I go, I can't even imagine. And he goes, I can do it. It's still hard from his perspective. My admiration was like that was freakishly strong. I don't know how you do it. He goes, it's hard. Yeah. But he goes, the difference is I can do it. Yeah. That's part of what we're talking about when I first started writing the website, being exposed as a fraud or Charlotte, or just a nink and poop or something like that. It was hard to get past that. But then once you get past it, you're like, okay, well, nobody's perfect. And you realize that most people think like you do in terms of what's reasonable and what's not reasonable. Here, this is a bit of a rabbit hole, but it's a good example. I've been in a funk for a while now. I don't want to say like I should be on medication, but maybe I had to think about it. Things are hard. There's a lot going on. And I'm not a walking basket of kittens and rainbows. Yeah, I hear you. And I thought maybe what I need to do is I need to change, I mean, I was surrounded myself with some positive people, which helps. And it helps me in some ways. It doesn't help because it just makes you feel worse about yourself. Yeah. Because why are you not positive? I got you. I got you. Yeah. What's your problem? Yeah. So I decided to do this actually yesterday that I'm going to make a point. I'm going to do so on my Instagram account that I'm going to post a picture to my post, not a story. Yeah. I rarely do stuff to the, because there's a permanence to it that I didn't really like. And I go, I'm going to post something to my post every single day until I get bored of this. And the point would be to look at my life in a way that allows me to recognize and appreciate the smaller moments. How can I find something in my daily grind, my daily negativity, the daily pressure, the weight that I feel? How can I go? That was a really good cookie and I didn't have to buy it. Yeah. I got you. Like, how can you find like these things that just can make you happy or recognize that that was actually worth doing? So I decided I'm going to do that. And so I had a sketch and everybody wants me to post these sketches on my Instagram account. And it's like all they really want. So I have one that I started recently and I never finished it because I abandoned the idea. So I said, I'll start with this one. This is current. This is brand new. It's not me going back in the archives. And I posted it. And people that engage with me some regularity, I get comments like, where's your vapor barrier? Or like, where's the insulation? Yeah. You know, I was like, I just want to shoot myself in the head because I go, that wasn't the point. This is actually an exterior wall. That's why there's no insulation in it. And I even said I didn't finish it because it's not going to give me where I need to be. So why would I take the time to draw the vapor barrier? I'm not drawing a beautiful drawing so I can give it to somebody to turn it into a rev it drawing. Yeah. It's not a CB. Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's me working through something conceptually. Some people get it. Some people don't. I'm trying to balance the exhaustion from the people redlining my drawings just to kind of look. I'm not trying to teach you anything here. It's just what I'm doing. Yeah. To people doing red lines. So there's this idea of how can you live in the moment and evolve in a way that's not only beneficial to you, but could be beneficial to other people. I don't know. Talking about this stuff is what brings it value. And I gave up a long time ago trying to convince people that I'm something other than I'm not. I don't do that anymore. I made my peace with that through the website years and years and years ago. Yeah. It doesn't mean I want people to think I'm stupid, but I'm okay if people don't agree with me. Like that's something that doesn't phase me so much anymore. Yeah. Yeah. But it's that process that makes it worthwhile because at the same time the guy asked about insulation drives me crazy. It's It's like they're asking a question, why don't you have insulation in here? And then you go, well, 'cause it's an exterior wall on both sides, so why would I put insulation? He doesn't know. - Yeah. - Why do I have to read it that he's challenging my knowledge? It's not even that unreasonable. I just don't like it. - Yeah. - You know? So that's the example of, it has value because it starts a conversation and I'll get something out of it maybe, they'll get something out of it. But it's not jumping to the equal sign of, hey internet, quit retlining my stuff, that was not my point and you're stupid 'cause you don't know and saying, all right, they're seeing this, they have a question, why don't you have insulation? - Yeah. - That's it. I get to choose which way to go. - It's a matter of perspective for sure. - Yeah. - Yeah. So that's maybe a very obtuse way to talk about why I think it still provides value while it's still worth doing. But part of the reason I think it's good is it conveyed that there's pain associated with something that's positive. - Yeah, so. - Yeah, it's funny this weekend was, substitute teaching for a studio 'cause of the sky. He had to be gone for a day. So I'm meeting with these groups of students and they're showing me the project and they get done one of the students was like, hey, I listen to your show a lot and I really like it, thanks a lot. He's like, I've been listening to it and he's like, I found it a couple of, he said a couple years ago or something. It's really cool and it's one of those times and I still don't take it very well. So I'm just like, yeah, okay, thanks. Feel really awkward because it's still, it's one of those things that it registers it. - Oh, well, somebody's paying attention. I mean, I know the people you, but it's always interesting to meet those people and have that. So you know that there's still some value in it externally, even though I think it still has value in terms for sure. But yeah, it was just a surprise that that happened. - I think I've told this story before, but one of my old bosses would be out somewhere social and somebody would come up and very likely they always do and say, I thought about being an architect, but I'm not good at math or I can't draw, so I decided to be an accountant. And his response was always, you made the right decision. - Yeah. - Right, like conveying that being an architect is a drag, it's hard, it's not great. And it always sat wrong with me. And so at one point in my life, after hearing that a dozen, two dozen, three dozen times whatever it was, I decided that whenever somebody said, "Oh, I wanted to be an architect, but I became a fill in the blanket instead." My response was, "Oh, you're lost. My job's way better than whatever it is you're doing." Like whatever it was. (laughing) Yeah. - It was like, "Be proud of what you do." I mean, you've dedicated your life to a little bit. So again, it's a matter of perspective. But it's still sometimes hard to take those compliments because my default answer now when somebody tells me that I don't know that they listen to the podcast is like, "Well, don't hold it against me." - Yeah. - That's my canned response because I don't really know what to say. - Yeah. - And they didn't say, "Your podcast is amazing." They just said they listened to it. And I was kinda like, "Okay, well, there's more to me than that, hopefully, you know, that's not a bad thing." But I should go, "Awesome. Thanks. Do you have a favorite episode?" - Yeah. - I mean, there's so many ways that I could take it. - True, true. - And I don't take it that way. - Yeah. - So that's something I'm working on. The last question that I had in here that I thought might be interested just getting into it. And we can make this as long or short as we wanted to, quite honestly. What is the show to you after having done 190 plus episodes, you know, we're 204 now, kind of the evolution. When you think about the show, what does it think about? Like I think about burnout. I think about running out of topics. I think about how career changes have influenced the topics that we've talked about. There's a lot that you can get into. And most of them are positive. Most of them are just putting your thought process audibly out there for everybody to hear. But what I settled on was that the reality is that the longer you do this, the more difficult it becomes to pretend that every topic is brand new. You know, we have talked about design and clients and mentorship and culture and getting to meetings on time and leadership. And there's an art to this. You were insane it earlier. In the beginning, we talked about a lot of red-side intellectual stuff because I was doing a lot of residential stuff. The last couple years we talk about firm management, firm leadership because that's what we do a lot of that kind of stuff now. We don't get into, hey, here's this cool bench I designed. And here's how I did it out of this gauge metal. Yeah. It's different. And I would say that the thing that influenced me now most is trying to come up with topics that are worth talking about that I can talk about for an extended period of time. We didn't say it earlier. That was one of the major goals was to pick one topic and do it for the whole show and not do 10 topics per show. Yeah, which becomes difficult at times. And I'm going to be honest though, I think sometimes I think you're harder on yourself than you should be for some of that stuff because you'll eliminate things. I'm like, man, we can talk about it for that long. You're like, no, I can't. And I know that we can if we just did it. But overall, yeah, it's difficult because like I mentioned before, we started recording even is that we're talking about a profession that's been around for forever. And it doesn't really change all that rapidly. There's a lot of things that were true about our profession when episode 001 was recorded that are still true to that eight years later or doing 204. And how many different ways can we approach that? And we try. But at the same time, we don't want to be repetitive and go, oh, well, this week it's designed from this angle. And now it's designed from that angle or sketching a versus sketching b. And that does get difficult to try to stay. And I don't want to say fresh, it's not the right word. It even relevant is not the right word. But I don't know what the correct phrase would be, but not to be repetitive, I think, is the mere challenge. Well, you know, one of the things that goes into my brain when I think about that has to do with crossover appeal. If we were talking about urban planning, the appeal to that is a pretty narrow band. Yeah. Certainly, if you're going to talk about one thing for an hour, and you're going to do that every two weeks for nine years. Yeah. That would be a difficult thing, I think, to do. When I think about the crossover appeal, I think about the audience that we have, because it's high school kids. It's people in college. It's people in their early career. It's people in their middle career. It's people at the end of their career. It's architectural and thosiest. It's homeowners that are looking to understand what does this phase of the process look like? Yeah. It's a little all over the place because of the topics we choose become a Google search response to a question that somebody asked. And I think that, I don't know, more than 200 episodes later, from where we started, I think the show now, it's less about proving that we have answers. And more about showing how those answers have evolved or how they've changed. I can't say this for you. I believe it to be true. But I would say we're not trying to be the definitive voice on architecture. I think that would be unbearable for every person I've ever met. Who has ever met me? Yeah, but I would never claim to such. That's a little bit beyond what I would ever want to say. What's a little bit of the teaching part of it? It's like you sit there and think, I'm going to tell you how to do something. And I don't know that we really teach people how to do things other than this is what we think about. And this is what our equal signs were based on these priorities and these ingredients and these considerations. The assumptions and conclusions that we've come to. And I think the show still works because you and I are still paying attention. We're still arguing with our own assumptions. And we're still finding the parts of practice that are worth talking about, even though the shine were off a long time ago. That may not sound like a grand mission statement. Yeah, yeah. But it's probably an honest one. Yeah, I mean, over time, and I was a mid maybe earlier on, I did approach it more of wanting to be that definitive voice but I think I gave up on it pretty quick. But I think now I approach it much more like I do when I'm trying to teach students. It's like, I'm going to give you my opinion. I'm going to tell you what I think. But in the end, it's your decision to make. Yeah. But I'm just going to try to give you all the knowledge that I can about the decision that you're trying to make or the action that you're trying to do. And hopefully that helps you make something decision. Yeah. Yeah. My job is not to tell you what to do. My job is to help you think about what you're trying to do. With a little bit more information or a different perspective. Yeah. We're here to be your architectural Sherpas. OK, well, that was a fun episode. But I think we've reached a point where I'm going to call today's show Arap. Thanks Andrew for being with me for this journey. And thank you, the listener, for being with us to work through episode 204. Character development revisited. Special thanks to our sponsor, Construction Specialties, Maker of Architectural Building Products, designed to master the movement of buildings, people, and natural elements. Construction Specialties has been creating inspired solutions for a more intelligently built environment since 1948. Visit mastering movement.net to learn more. Want to get every new episode automatically downloaded? We're available on all major podcast platforms. So hit that subscribe button and you get notified every two weeks when you publish a marvelous new episode. While you're there, please take a few moments to leave us a five star. We're still here rating. To get even more content, head over to liveofonarchitect.com for blog posts, links, and info about this resourceful episode and all the website has to offer. You can even add your voice and join the community. Thanks so much for tuning in. 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