Smart Design Studio

Welcome back to the Architecture firm Marketing Podcast, a show where I speak to architects who have found success in their business, marketing and communications, as well as consultants and experts who will share their unique tips and strategies to help you attract your ideal clients. I'm your host Dave Sharp, Marketing Consultant for Architects, and if you'd benefit from professional advice and guidance on your marketing, you can head to vanityprojects.com to check out my coaching services and book in a free 30 minute consultation to discuss your situation. Joining me on the show today is a very special guest, William Smart from Smart Design Studio, a 40 person practice based in Sydney, Australia. In this episode, we discussed the challenges that William and the team faced as the practice grew, and why William found hiring a skilled general manager early on in the journey was key to their success. We looked at how William was able to win his first multi-residential projects, and he shared his tips for getting your foot in the door in this highly competitive space. We talked about why it's so important to build a profile in the industry with a broad marketing strategy and not just focus on reaching the next client. We looked at how William thinks about the studio's unique selling points, and why it can be a good thing for an architect to have a signature approach that ties their projects together. And finally, we spoke about why it's important for architects to spend a bit of time educating their clients about design, and how we, as a profession, can better engage with the public and promote the value of what architects do. So I hope you enjoy my conversation with William Smart from Smart Design Studio. William, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, David. It's a great pleasure to be here. Awesome. So a lot of our Australian listeners will be very familiar with your studio and what you do. But there's a bunch of people in other countries that would appreciate maybe a little bit of an overview of the studio and the sort of mix of work that you guys work on, and also just a bit of an idea of the size of the studio as well, which I think is an interesting component. Yeah, well, we are about 40 to 45 people, and our practice was established in 1998. So we're nearly 25 years old now about half our work is residential work, whether it's houses or apartment buildings, and the other half is a range of other things, including commercial buildings, public buildings, master planning, and even a little bit of product design. And the studio sort of has gradually grown to that size. We arrived at about 40 people, I would think probably seven or eight years ago now. And that's a size where we're very comfortable and we want to stay at that size and not grow anymore. Yeah, and in terms of being comfortable at that size, because quite often architects will talk about this, these sort of difficult levels of practice. Yes, where you get to a certain point, and it's all great, then it's quite difficult to make a jump up to that next kind of bracket. And so around 40 to 50 you've found is a bit of a sort of a sweet spot. What's the reason for that or why have you found that to be a good size to sort of end up at? I think that the size for us is one where we can participate in very large projects, and yet we can oversee also thoroughly smaller projects, so we're able to do large ends more. And I feel with our structure that we couldn't grow any more than that and maintain the quality or the rigor in the design documentation in particular. But speaking of earlier to the other point is that we grew gradually, so I started on my own from a bedroom in 98 and then within a year we'd had another person employed and then another person after that and so forth. And I felt as though somewhere around up to seven people, I could manage quite easy on my own. And then we got to eight, nine, it started getting really hard and we grew to about 12 and it became impossible to do on my own. And then we got a general manager and he came in and did an amazing job really and Evan just made it very easy again. He looked after all the billing, the contracts, the HR, the running of the office, the paying of the bills and it just made things a lot easier. He was so good at attracting new clients because he was an incredible communicator and a great frame of what we do. He could frame it to the clients very well. He took that from 12 to about 20 and somewhere around then it became difficult. I like to think of it sort of visually as almost like a cane, you know a stick cane where you have the kind of not where the leaves grow out of. There comes this point when it becomes really difficult and something has to give in order to release the pressure and take you to the next stage and at that point I got a PA and we got a finance manager and they were able to divvy up the jobs and work independently. And then from that we grew to 30 and that felt okay and then somewhere around 30 got difficult. And then interesting enough around 40 it became very difficult again and we didn't couldn't see really how to change the business there without really being to the next stage and we thought instead of changing how we work will probably just get better at working at that scale and really master it. And that's something that I'm constantly working on is trying to find ways of doing it more efficiently, trying to find ways of making it more exciting for the staff here to develop their design so more autonomy specifically. And also how do you kind of streamline it so that you're not bogged down at that size and you're able to do those things like very small projects and quite large projects and little bit of product design as well. Yeah, that's so interesting and when you were at that stage of around 12 employees when when Evan came on board and started helping with all of those massive areas of the business was his background outside of architecture was it all in business and and that sort of thing. Yeah, and he was actually a client and he who he was a client of mine who built a house and really loved architecture and design and we just had a conversation. He said if there's a way I could get into this world, I would love it and it just was that magic moment where I said well it's funny. You should ask we're right at the moment now struggling and and if you'd like to come and have a look and give it a try then do that and we started like that and it went on for very in a number of years. And he ended up leaving because he moved back with his family to the US but up until that point where you just had a very happy relationship working together. Do you think that that sort of 12 person stage was about the right time to do that or do you sort of wish that you've made me done that sooner in hindsight. I had read somewhere that our manager can look after about seven people and I thought that was probably about right and in our work. I guess architecture tends to go in my opinion anyway quite slowly like you work on a house for months before you launch the planning application and then six months before you go to tender. So it's not as hard as other types of industries you're managing. So I feel like somewhere between 10 and 12 is probably the right amount but for us it's always been that case of can you make it work. How do you fund it? How do you get yourself to that place where it's right and I think you know when you know and for us it was summer 11 or 12. We just thought this is this is not working we've got to rethink it but up until that point I was always thinking well maybe I could try doing this or I could offload this or you know I get outsource this and they might be other ways of working about it. Yeah, but I also I don't I was never taught any of this and most of us haven't to be fair. But I just sort of learnt it on the run so I started my practice after I'd had about six years of post-crate experience and I'd sort of learnt really a lot of the fundamentals like I knew how to draw and write a spec and coordinate consultants. But the rest of it I just sort of did it by learning and you know there was no training in how to run a business how to market a company how to look after your team you just learnt it and mostly it was when it got too hard or something was broken that we thought. Yeah, we need to fix that like getting electrician. Yeah, and you talking about the mix of work that you do now the 50% residential 50% kind of other stuff did you have a similar mix in those earlier days or was it more of the residential and then a gradually more public and commercial started to come in over time. So I mean my first project was to do a apartment renovation for $50,000 and then the next one was to do a terrace house extension in Sydney for like $100,000. Both impossibly low budgets that we somehow we made it work and then from that grew to doing more of that type of work which is it's logical in a way but it's also a hard part to growing is that people are attracted to you because of the work that you do. And they see you as being able to do just like something you've done before but maybe a little bit tailored to them so growing it to large scale work either requires a lucky opportunity or someone who believes in what you're able to offer and able to deliver and I think it would have been in 99 someone asked me to renovate a very small block of. Flat side call them rather than apartments so a red brick block of flats that you see in the sense of a city to renovate that and turn that around and we did that project is our first apartment building and then went to do a couple more like that because it looked pretty good at the end of it and people thought we knew what we were doing and also they could see the financial benefit of repositioning these you know very small apartments in the sense of it was within Sydney and those projects were sort of interesting. They were never fully documented because the people didn't want that. and we didn't ever control them on the building sites. So they were built pretty roughly. Yeah. Most of the details were sort of smashed together by the developer of the builder. And they looked good enough, but they weren't that good on close inspection. But we did use them to build knowledge and build understanding and to build the practice moving towards doing apartment buildings. And we also recognized with them that they gave us knowledge and insight into that whole world of apartment buildings. So we photographed them. It's hard to publish those kinds of projects. They weren't published so much, but they became part of our portfolio and our PowerPoints for selling future work. And then we gradually went on to the larger, larger projects. But off the back of those, we ended up looking up with a couple of developers and Sydney that did DAs. And even though they promised they would deliver the whole building and the next one would be the job where you'd do the full documentation and run it on site and you get the outcome year after. We quickly realized that most of those developers just wanted us to help get through the planning process. And young architects, like we were at the time, are very keen and eager and persuasive and they want the outcome that the developer wants. We were at the time we wanted to get something approved even that might have been 25% over the floor space ratio. We were in there to win the fight and we worked pretty hard on those. And so it came to me after like three or four years of doing a lot of DAs. The realization came to me that these were never going to be real projects. They're always going to be planning applications. And so I felt at that time that I had to change something. And so I just decided to rethink who we would approach and we went to talk to developers like phrases, noting that there's a guy they called Dr. Quack and he'd been doing these interesting projects in Sydney. Everything they started, they delivered. So they'd be promised for that. And we talked to him and we were able to go at that point and say, look, I've done these 12 DAs, but I haven't built much. Is there anything we can do? And he asked us to furnish some apartments for him that he couldn't sell. And so we furnished five apartments gradually, they all sold. And then he gave us the project to do the interiors of a building called Central Park West, which is the Tower on Broadway in Sydney, which is designed by Sean Neville, Centella's on Neville. And we did the interiors of the short tower there. And that was kind of a big break for us because we weren't just designing the template apartments, but we were doing the common areas, the foyer, we were overseeing the whole implementation of it across the board. And it really took our company from one that had been doing apartment buildings of 10 up to 20, took us to a row of 100 interiors. - Wow. - And that was probably our first breakthrough into that sector. And then phrases, "Has just to enter a competition, which we won." And that was our first building to do entirely on our own. Our breakthrough was really through interiors. And the insight to going there was to try and get stuff built. Was we just didn't want to be the people that did DAs forever. - Yep. - And we wanted to have stuff built. And from that we built Connor, and it did very well. And then other people believed in us. And we went on to do more work for phrases, and we're building stuff for them now, but also for other developers as well. - Yeah. I'm going to be moved on to developers in multi-residential because it's an area that we haven't spent a lot of time on the podcast, but it's in one that a lot of residential practices are really interested in. And one of, you touched on so many things that they struggle with and talk to me about, which is that they usually isn't a lot of publicity and press coverage for multi-residential work. So you end up with this kind of chicken and egg problem of how do we actually kind of get our work out there. So most architects realize I need to be proactive and go out to the developers. They're not just going to find out about what I've been doing, but then it's this question of how do you do that? Coming from a private residential sort of space where you're not going out to people on the street and going, hey, do you need something done to your house? It's all kind of that word of mouth and inbound. That can be a really big adjustment, but you were talking about there. You went and did a bit of prospecting. You identified who was the right developer in the market who had the right kind of work and then you went to them. And that's amazing. (laughs) So yeah. - Yeah. - And we did it. It wasn't intentional, but he asked us to do interiors first and we thought, oh, yeah, we can do that. And that's how that was our way into it. And if I look back on that now, I recognize that it put him in a very low position of risk because we were going to design, I think there was probably four template apartments that was our initial commission. And if he didn't like them, he could do something else with them. And I look back on that and I can think about the challenges that I had at the time. And I'd say they were probably assigned generally to this idea of risk. And this would apply to many people that if you're someone who's been doing houses and you want to do multi-res, then the developer might think of you as a bit of a risk. A, you may not understand construction, you might not understand how to build DNC type construction, which is a world in itself. (laughs) The market might not know you for presenting you to the market as the person who's selling the name behind the sales success. And then also just, is there a risk there that you won't have thought about something or cover off something? You don't know what you don't know. And that's what a new project can expose you to. I think you have to assess what the other person would be considering in the newest option. So if you were a developer of scale and you were considering someone who done a lot of apartment buildings versus someone who hadn't done many, then you'll be weighing up the risk of training and developing someone young with someone who's more experienced. And one way to manage that, which could be a form of introduction for some people would be to partner, sort of work with someone who's tried and tested and develop a partnership relationship. Well, another way of doing it would be to choose a very small boutique style building where you feel like you're well truly within your comfort zone and then to grow from there. Or another way of getting the work in the first place is to position yourself differently. So you're gonna do things differently. You might have a special signature of how you approach design that could be really appealing for the building and waiting the developers appetite with imagery of that particular approach could be useful. But so I feel like it's a competitive world. And I think architecture is very competitive in a way. And in order to get the work, you have to win that competition. And you're gonna lose points because you're not experienced. But you have other qualities that you can leverage from or you can partner or take a limited approach. So one way would be just to do one part of the building and then to build knowledge and grow from that. Like the interiors or the foyers or the common areas or some particular part you have experienced with. Yeah, that's great advice. You mentioned that you'd work with them over a lot of years in the multi-rest space. Does your studio just have a small number of clients that you do a lot of repeat business with? Or is there a sort of a philosophy of continuing to prospect and reach out to new people and or is it just inbound? But I guess I'm just interested in that composition is the name of the game really establishing those very tight relationships? Yeah, a bit of both, actually. And of feel as though sometimes we'll go to a place where we feel like the skills and the talent that we have in our office as it evolves over time is more suited to a specific type of residential product. And we're gonna pursue that. So in the near future, our big focus is on more of a high end, smaller boutique offering, whereas in the past we had also, and we are working on some very large projects. But we feel that the talent within our offices lies within great attention to detail, doing things a little bit differently, interesting spatial volumes, unusual construction techniques. And therefore we're kind of becoming more particular in the areas we want to target. And the past that might have just been less particular because I was excited about the opportunity or it might have also been that we didn't really know that about our business just yet. So an example of that is I've just learned that design and construct building is very hard. And if you want to get a good quality outcome, you've got to just keep everything standard and just have a few special things. So if you're relying on having beautiful slim window frames on a project in Alexandria, then you're probably relying on things that aren't realistic. But if you've designed the building where everything is standard and there's a couple special things that you can really focus on, then you'll probably be able to deliver it quite well because you can put your energy into that and let the whole DNC machine, if you could refer to it in that way, just kind of take everything back to the most economic or the safest, the lowest risk rate of buildings. - Yeah, it's very interesting. In terms of the public side, I'm imagining that there's some similarities in the journey there, right? Is it, you start off working on something very small with a particular council or government and then you gradually work your way up as you go? Are there any major differences in how, like from a business stamp or not? - No, it's the same sort of thing, isn't it? - It is the same thing. And in a way, the public process is, I think, probably harder because you will be assessed by a number of points us spreadsheet and. you'll make your submission for the new project and a lot of them are government projects and that's why they have this more transparent way of working is that you make your submission, you'll score a lot of points in the experience that you have or the approach that you have or the personnel that you have but you might lose points in not being in that state within the country or you might lose points because you haven't done exactly that scalability of a group getting some feedback on one project. There was a requirement a part of the project was to do a 1000 square meter office and I put in our relevant experience a 5000 square meter office and a 4000 square meter office and they call back and said well we didn't score you very high there because you hadn't showed us the 1000 square meter office in my view as well if you can do five you can do one but it doesn't always go like that so you actually have to kind of think about that as a kind of a point system and therefore there's always someone who's more experienced than you are so getting through that process is quite hard and it's also I think the public projects are very very competitive in terms of fees so if your fees are high you're just not going to go you won't get in there so it's it's similar kind of process and we've we've gradually built out way into that world but it's a it's a very hard one to crack because you can't just go in and you know try to sell yeah exactly sell sell sell the yeah the portfolio of the practice leading up to you uh yeah as far as business development goes you went into a bit of detail earlier about who sort of plays that role in the practice and previously Evan had been very involved in that and that sort of thing but these days now the practice is a bit bigger do you have members of your team who were devoted to entering competitions sort of meeting with developers and is that sort of a function within our practice we have someone anger who who leads our competition and our AI submission so he leads all of the competition work that we do and does an amazing project that the team that work on competitions changes but we have the one leader and so there's a knowledge that's transferred from one submission to the next one we also have a couple of people in the office that help with marketing in various ways and to part-time people Alex and uh Veronica and they all have they both have different roles but they they also participate in a little bit of social media through LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook and then look after the website and the updates that come with that and any communications that might come from different magazines yeah so that that's kind of part of it and then the final component was that we have a core team of people kind of in our more executive team or more senior uh people within the office meet every fortnight to discuss you know networking opportunities and they'll they'll talk a bit about meetings that might have had and in that forum where we age say uh what we're working on then we'll start to think uh there's a lot of work in the pipeline there isn't much in the pipeline these are the kinds of sectors we need to you know be more involved with because our office works very well when we have one-up hub and building or commercial building of similar scale in a DA stage and another one in documentation stage it just the the resources within the office work well like that and so they'll they'll talk together about opportunities that are in the office and we'll all around that we know of and and try to attract that work I mean earlier you mentioned just a bit about you know whether we have one or two developers we sort of have this uh we don't work with a lot yeah and we we tend to go back to the same people a bit and then there's a few new ones that come in as well but I feel like uh in a way uh it's a bit like buying a car the developer should probably be thinking about us as potentially being the right showroom for designing their car do does the design ethos that we hold does that fit the next project in you know grab a point that they want to build or is it more suited to another part of the world and what's the the potential of that yeah and I like the car showroom analogy because if you were shopping for say a four door sedan there's a lot of choices like there are a lot of architects out there and each brand has different core values that will come through in its DNA semisadies will have a different set of core values to a Toyota or BMW or and some of those are better suited to certain markets than others are yeah absolutely and and that sort of takes me to the next kind of question about brand but there's this one final thing I wanted to touch on which was you're interested in being a bit of a fly on the wall at your fortnightly executive team business development meeting you mentioned sometimes when the pipelines for when the pipelines not so for just briefly in a in a in a cycle or a month where you're feeling that the pipeline is not so for I'd be fascinated to get a sense of what actions or group decisions you might come to that would be the thing to then work on to start addressing that problem in the short term. Everything is long to medium term but if we are openly saying we're missing a large apartment building say and or a large commercial building in the DA stage then we'll talk about who to connect with and then we said we need we need this now so perhaps you know you could meet with this developer or you could go and talk to this person or does anybody know of any possible leads and we'll talk about that and then try to actively make connections and we feel as though just the email and the phone call it isn't necessarily good enough but it's it's a start and then at least you'll get an answer which might be there's nothing around at the moment and that's also fine but what's also been quite good in our business and we as again as a sun plan we just sort of grew to who we are and how we work now just by kind of learning and developing but there was no rulebook followed but we do small projects and larger projects and that is quite a nice combination from a creative point of view because on the larger projects you have less detail but more ambition you can influence a street or both sides of the street on some occasions or make squares and beautiful public places or you know impact the way that hundreds of people live in that precinct and that's quite a powerful thing and then on the smaller projects you can get right down to the detail and experiment with materials or experiment with construction techniques and you just can't do that on larger projects but in a in a business where you do these two things and we really pursue that from a creative point of view when the large projects dry up and you can't control their timing then the smaller projects often have a bit of range in them where they can take up a larger team so we can then say and this happened right at the start of COVID when our larger projects went on hold and some reason every person at home wanted to just work to the house and it called us about it we just move the team across to doing houses and they really worked on houses so having that large and small scale worked quite well and I think the difference is especially for people who are living in their own house while they're planning to do changes to it is that it's more elastic it doesn't all have to you know it could be done in five months and that would be great but it could be done in three if you were able to go faster or it could be done in seven if if you didn't have the resources they've got a bit of elasticity whereas the larger projects you know tend to be when you get a stock tomorrow and and when it all finished in four months so it's just when you're in it and you've got to get going if you like what you're hearing so far please make sure to share this episode with colleagues you feel would benefit and while you're at it why not leave me a five star review on the Apple podcast or Spotify app every review makes it easier for people to find the show and hear what my amazing guests have to say I also love hearing your questions and I'm planning more listener Q&A episodes so please send your questions into questions at vanityprojects.com and I'll answer them on the show. In terms of the analogy that you've brought up earlier the car show room and this distinctiveness between different brands and your studio might be the Mercedes or something else this idea of what would be a good fit for a particular location or project that's a pretty challenging thing to think about isn't it sometimes because architecture at the highest end the competition is as you mentioned it's particularly strong right there's a lot of good practices and they're all doing pretty pretty amazing work and you know finding that point of difference I feel like I bring it up with every single guest and we just struggle through the the conversation of do you know what your point of difference is but do you have a sense of you mentioned values I suppose there's a look and feel component as well in terms of how you present yourself to the world but is there anything else that you thought about in terms of what would make it easier for a potential client to have a conscious decision about the reasons that they might go for your firm versus another. Yes and I think objectively I could say that we have a very strong focus on interiors and that's critical for us. So our interior design team isn't brought in at the end of the planning process to choose the colors and do some details or some joinery design there in tag rule in the studio and their job as well as all of ours is to kind of imagine and create extraordinary spaces so to move beyond the standard as much as you can so that's kind of one objective difference the other one is that we're just more detailed than most people and I know that because we do a hell of a lot of drawings and they get checked so many times and they're generally pretty good documentation packs so they're two very tangible points of difference. The other part that relates more to the showroom is just what is the flavor of the work that we do and I feel as though, generally speaking, our work is quite masonry based whether that's brick or concrete. And it has a kind of a particular sort of form in it that resonates and feels as though it unites all the work, whether it's very apparent or not, it's sort of in all the work. And I feel like there's a fundamental to really modernist planning principles that applies to all of our work. So we'll try to, I mean, one of my petatists is having a door in the middle of a wall, I kind of wanted at the end of the room if I can get it out of the room that's even better. And then I want to aggregate all of the elements together. So kitchen and bathroom and I like that sort of pod design where they're all clumped together. So just those principles of how we plan and introduce symmetry and order and those aspects to the planning of the projects is really important as well. So I feel like that's probably the DNA that carries through. Now nail that question. Probably one of the best responses I've got because yeah, it's great because you started with, you know, as you put it tangible objective criteria, that's an awesome place to start with the point of difference. If you can go where we're objectively have skill sets that other practices don't all don't have nearly as much as we do. That's awesome. But then also moving into that second area that the sort of the more what influences your work and the flavor of all of it. I think a lot of architects I find tend to avoid discussing that or going into that because they like to say this thing of we don't really have a practice style or a house style. And that I hear that sort of refrain cry often. But I think as a listener, do you think you get into it? You go, oh yeah, exactly. That's that's perfect. Yeah, but when I hear most people talk about that, I think well, that's I don't I don't I don't get it. Believe in what you're saying. I mean, I hear a lot of them say and you kind of get someone in you than they say, oh, I like this part about your style. I have a star. Yeah. Of course, you don't necessarily want to be limited to that part of your work. But you do have things you're interested in and you do kind of explore things and you do have curiosities that you are keen on understanding. I mean, so it like in our work, the roof is a very rarely a big thing. We're kind of more about the walls. It's just we're not trying to do that. It's just how we end up going. I feel that we haven't done much with wood. And the reason is we haven't been attracted to it because we've been preoccupied with brick and concrete and starting things. And now we're just thinking wood. Let's let's have a go wood, you know. And I better feeling once we start it, then it will open up this whole world of understanding wood and working in different ways. And so it would be a big thing in our office at the moment, but it's not been that way. But I still feel as though some of those kind of concepts of, you know, spatial volume, brilliant planning. What does the material want to do? It's just a different medium of working in. And that's driven by changing circumstances. So in our office, we're really focused on sustainability and how much embodied energy is in the buildings that we're making. And then, you know, can we save on that? And if woods the way, then maybe we just need to get serious about really looking at that. I mean, as a new material. Yeah, that's really interesting. And the way you described it, things that you're interested in that you kind of revisit and come back to because it's something that you were interested in. That makes sense when we think about fashion designers, artists, film directors, you know, we see these sort of motifs that happen in their work. And that's what starts to become recognizable. And I think it is strange to hear sometimes architects looking to avoid being, I guess as they see it sort of pigeon hold or maybe this perception that they're sort of forcing something onto their clients. But I think they end up shooting themselves in the foot a little bit approaching it that way. Yeah, and look, it's not like from a marketing perspective, it's not bad to be able to frame what it is that you're interested in doing. I think that's probably pretty good. There are people in the world who have an image like Georgia money. He's always wearing a black shirt. Yeah, black pair of pants. It's kind of that's a part of his image. And I think, you know, people kind of understand that and they get that. I feel like you've also got to leave the door open to growing and evolving and developing. Now in terms of marketing, I suppose, if it's wildly different each time, then a lot of potential clients aren't going to really understand what they're going to get. But if there's a DNA that's legible in most of the work, then they'll look at it and think, well, I feel like with them, I won't get too much glass or I won't, you know, it's not going to be, you know, like an almond foster project or, you know, it's going to be a different approach. Yeah. And so that's at least kind of starting to narrow down. Yeah, certainly. I mean, you touched on risk being a big factor earlier. So if you're able to have a little bit more consistency in the work that you're doing and that consistency can be seen in the market, that just translates into less risk, doesn't it? Yeah. And probably when they are going to market and I'm just sort of thinking about apartment buildings here, they're going to want to leverage some of the work that you've done. So we did this beautiful house for Judith Nelson, called in the go slam. And after that, I mean, I kind of said to someone in passing, it's almost like a sculpture to be lived in and that kind of got picked up as a bit of a tagline. And then after that, we had a developer saying, I want to build a block of units and I want them to be like in the go slam. And then he just wanted to use the tagline sculpture to be lived in. And of course, the leverage for selling these apartments before they were built was images of a new go slam. And so people want that. Lots of people would love to live in that. Definitely. Absolutely. In terms of branding, the other side to this, the company brand, but there's also your personal brand and that you're doing things like this podcast, being visible interviews, engage with the media, also in quite engaging on your social media as well. And your Instagram and you put your personal side of things out there quite openly and honestly as well. Was that always something that you would naturally sort of comfortable with doing engaging in that way as a director? Is it something that you sort of learned and practiced over time? Yeah. Yeah. It's probably changed, you know, since Instagram's probably my introduction to doing that to the world up until that I thought two things. One is my life's pretty boring and that might be much to say that was one part of it. And then maybe you can just let the works speak for yourself and that the needs to you don't need to sell it at all. And one of my really great friends pushed me really hard to join Instagram when it was very new. And she said, you got to get on this social media platform. It's so good. And we had dinner a few times. I kept saying, I'm not that interested in it. I've joined LinkedIn, but I never look at it. I've never done Facebook. You know, I don't do Twitter. It's just not my gig. I'd rather spend my time at the drawing board. And I think what I end up just being pushed into it and doing it because I got sick of her asking me to do it. So I kind of did it out of duress really, but I really I loved it. I thought it was fun actually. And I kind of enjoyed posting things that I thought people might be interested in. And they get a few more followers and you post things that things might be interested in. And since that time I've kind of realized and I hadn't planned this at the start, but I realized that people might want to follow just to know who you are. Noting that our industry is as much of a service industry as it is an industry that produces products like drawings and specifications. I think we are in many ways service industry. And I feel like a successful job is one where the outcome is great. And the process was fun and enjoyable. The guys think you should enjoy building. Everyone should enjoy it. It's a big, you know, if you're building a house, it's a big chunky life. Make it fun and enjoy it. Because otherwise it's just, you know, for five years of your life that's just compromised and that's a long time. But I feel like that's probably those forums for me in particular Instagram is a bit of an opportunity to tell anyone who's interested in following about what's happening in my life and what's, you know, who I am as a person a little bit. And then, you know, if I've been to a good concert and I want to tell other people it's really good, they might see that on there or if there's a car really like then, you know, I can share a little bit of a story about that. There's not a lot of super personal things on there, but I do think that that's not a bad thing to sell as well. And the great thing about those kind of forums is you can just do whatever you want with it really. You can make it as personal as you'd like it to be or you can make his work is wanted and you can change it and you can edit it after it's been posted. So there's a ton of flexibility in that. But I feel as though it's allowed people to understand a bit more about who I am. And I'm not from Sydney. So I don't have deep roots in the city. I know a lot of people here, but I don't have those really deep roots where I can hang out with some people I went to school with and build a network out of that. So being able to tell the world about what we do through media, whether that social or print or online is how we're able to keep our business growing and we've been able to grow it to the size it is. So I find all that very valuable. And I think what you have to say is as important as just getting a message out there. The one other thing I wanted to add to that was it was really off the back of Indigo slam that I realized that my attempts at marketing weren't as good as I thought they were. And you know, I just we won some awards and generally the feedback was where and as did you come from I've never heard of you don't know who you are. I thought myself you kidding I've been slogging away this for nearly 20 years now it's been a long time and no one really knew about what I'm doing. what we were doing. So I did think at the end of that, well, maybe you have to change it up a little bit and share the stories in a better way and build a bit of profile. So the people do know who you are. And that understanding of how we work as well as what we make helps us to attract really amazing talent within the office and retain them and inspire them. It also allows us to attract really great clients. And then we even get emails and contacts from consultants and builders saying I just love to work with you if there have been opportunities. So across the network, there are benefits that are more than just getting the next job in the back. Yeah, definitely. In terms of when Indigo Slam came out and you sort of looked back on all of your marketing hard work over the years, maybe it was not so effective or just kind of perhaps too focused. Too focused. You know, we still on what do you think on Bell and Vogue magazine. So we had put all our all our jobs. We kept thinking, well, we finished a beautiful house. Let's get into Bell, although gluing and then we'll mark it from that. Most architects don't read that so they didn't know who we were. And it kept the phone ringing because someone would pick it up and say, I've got a new copy of this and I loved this house. Can you do one for me like that? So in one way, it was working quite well. But otherwise it was fairly limited in what it was doing for our whole company. That's so interesting because usually architects are heading the complete opposite direction. They're saying the way that I'm marketing, it's only being seen by other architects and I don't feel that I'm actually reaching clients and you're going, we will reaching clients, but we weren't reaching any other architects, which you're the first person to ever raise that as a problem in my entire career. So I guess I guess it's quite interesting. So maybe it comes back to what you're mentioning a second ago about those broader benefits of reaching consultants and other people in the industry and building that network. Yeah, just maybe if you could dig a bit deeper into that of what are the importance of that? Why does that matter? I think it's interesting to hear that that maybe we shouldn't discount this idea of raising your profile in the industry having importance. You touched on employment or recruitment or retention and that sort of stuff, but are there other sort of other meaningful benefits of sort of building that reputation? Yes, referrals as well. So the major sort of ones in promoting within your own industry are to attract talent and have them want to work here and know before they come what it's like, but also just referrals that come through the industry. So if you got to have, I mean, it must happen a lot to people where they say, I want to do a new commercial building and I want it to be incredibly sustainable. Who would you go to? And they might just think, it's my own studio. I've done the project. It's once awards. You should talk to them. And you probably do that if you felt like you weren't a big computer. But that does happen as well. And we find a lot that people will call within you inquiry and say something a bit like I was looking for someone who could do something amazing with brickwork and your name kept coming up. People kept saying go and speak to Smart Design Studio. And here we are. And then, you know, then it's got out there because that's an understanding amongst industry now that might have been created through making small videos on Instagram that builders laying bricks or it might have been created from, you know, a big building being published in an industry magazine like the Royal operation Center for City trains or it might just be that, you know, there's some some flats around the corner and people of the cinema that made from brick. But you can I think you can sort of build that approach and the I think also consultants shouldn't be underestimated, you know, having an amazing consultant team will make your work better and average consultant can actually make it worse. But you know, we can leverage from that and try to kind of build up to doing some exceptional work. So often we'll approach working with a say a structural engineer is here's a bit of a half-baked idea. And the aspiration of the project is to do this. What do you think? How would you approach that and the back and then the design develops. Yeah. So in the time we've got left, I'm kind of interested more in this bigger picture of architects and their role in society and the built environment. And as a practice that has a large profile and a large audience and and and you appear in a lot of different contexts, different magazines, different awards programs all over the place. But just interested in maybe getting your thoughts on as a practice, whether you feel that that bigger picture is improving heading in the right direction, going the wrong direction, maybe in terms of the relevance and role of architects in society and how we're involved and looked out and listened to. I guess just any sort of thoughts that come to mind on that topic. I love this question. And what comes to mind is a role that I feel we have, which is to continue to educate the clients that we have about what's great in design and what is enduring. So what will move through fashion and be significant in years to come and will actually give them joy in the place they're living and working or visiting. And I'm really focused on this at the moment. And just recently I did a presentation where I just started with showing a client buildings designed by Paladio and their floor plans. And I kind of felt like I couldn't probably justify the floor plan we'd created without talking about how important a floor plan is for building and going back to that. But I just thought that that was a great way to start the presentation with a small 15 minute lecture on something that they would probably find really interesting and would just change the tone a bit for it. So educating your clients is really important. That education can extend to a discussion about investment versus cost in a project. So investing quarterly materials enduring designed in low maintenance materials and things that last a long time and you'll actually save money in the long term. Invest in sustainability and you'll feel great about what you've done, which has got a high value and you'll also be helping a planet and reducing your running costs. So there's a lot of benefits through there. That's how we're approaching it within our practice. We think every client is an opportunity to build that. And also I feel like with our clients, if we're responsive, respectful time, respectful of their budgets and treat them really well, along with our builders, then we'll start to build trust in the team and then the trust builds great outcomes. We have to have that winning combination of great client, great build, great architect to do exceptional work is all the whole team has to be aligned and you know running in unison together outside of that as an industry. I don't think we do a good enough job in promoting the work that we do and I'm you know, last year we won 23 architecture awards and very few of those have been presented to the general public. And I want to know why how it is that someone could win a Wilkinson or Rob Moira award or the Suleiman prize and that story not be told to the general public. Now there will be lectures at brickworks or another sponsored event where people get to talk in depth to other architects about what they're doing, but there's a whole you know there's millions of people out there who want to hear about architecture. We don't have to look at you know the figures of all the numbers people that watch grand designs to know that this it's huge. It's a massive thing and I'd like that to be more embedded in our community and I feel as though the benefits of doing that would be far reaching you start to. To kind of build understanding of the complexity of architecture is pretty easy to get something wrong, but in every building there is literally thousands of components and thousands of opportunities for things to go wrong. So if you get two or three going wrong as not back you might have had you know 997 that go right. In that scenario so I feel like building understanding around the world telling the stories you know getting out some good knowledge and there is really a vital and I feel like as a profession where we're missing an opportunity to connect to the people who wanted and occasionally will have someone right to us and say that they're organizing a tour of people could they come visit our studio. And they're often people who are retired or from the general public very few of them are professionals and we just get a message back saying we put it up online the two of sold out in 10 minutes you know it's 50 people that's 50 people who are already waiting to do to do this kind of event this story is to be told. I mean that's probably a mission of mine as to see if we can get lectures for the public the general public about every winning architecture price you know on all the things that would be interesting I think there's people who want to know about what's happening in education design there's people who want to know about very sustainable solutions there's a whole rough. I'm actively working on that amazing and I think it's such a great idea I'm the most recent guest I had on the podcast was Amanda Bailew in the UK and she was I think you should have a chat because I think I'm on about the exact same stuff but she was really the whole episode was about this idea of educating public on on the world that the public are really interested learning about this stuff but exactly what you're saying as an industry we're not really giving that to them but we were trying to we're talking about how that sort of can fit into. of conferring to a practice. marketing when that component isn't necessarily directly linked to getting more work and more project. So sometimes it's hard to rationalize investing in that, doing that, but she argued that maybe 20% of your marketing and communications budget or time should be going towards those kinds of public activities. And I thought that's such a nice clear model. At the end of the day, it probably is the responsibility of practices to not wait for somebody else to come along and organize that for them, right, that they, as you're doing, to actually think of designing your own programs to engage with the public in what we do. Yeah. And I think our approach to marketing is to take one that's very broad and very consistent. So it's to be continually photographing work, releasing it to media and then also to participate in things like today in a podcast like today. We do some education work, we teach at the DTS as well. And so being an integrated part of that also feel like it's not there's no direct benefit. I don't think to our business for doing that. It's really about giving back and broadening our knowledge, but also the knowledge of our company within a whole range of different areas. It's so that was we take this very broad view that we should be have a presence in education. We should have a presence with our institute and our community. We should have a presence with the general public. We should have an online presence, which is to anybody who wants to tap into it. And then we should be releasing our imagery to accounts against the ground for to be freely used around the world. And then that may lead to more work, but it may not. And it may just sort of mean that you're a little bit more recognized whether that's fruitful or not. I think it's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. Well, you've got to go in the next few minutes, so we'll wrap up there. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast and very, very honest and open about everything that you're doing. So thank you and I really appreciate it. Thanks David. It was pretty, I mean, they're great questions and it's so nice to be part of this. That was my conversation with William Smart from Smart Design Studio. If you'd like to learn more about William and the studio, you can visit smartdesignstudio.com. Follow the studio on Instagram at smart.design.studio or follow William at William Smart. That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.