Starting from Scratch : Becoming an Architect Entrepreneur

i had always dreamed of having a studio of my own but the timing just never seemed right and i made a lot of excuses rational at the time but as i looked back really they were based in fear of the unknown of not being able to provide for my family fear of failure in 2012 the employer i was working for at the time cut all of the employees pay by 20 and they did that to keep the firm afloat but that really changed things for me what i thought was predictable and stable a steady paycheck no longer was and so in 2013 about two months before my 40th birthday i set off on my own with no savings no backlog of projects no studio just a drafting table in the corner of my living room a computer and an internet connection in the seven years since i've built a profitable business in the first year on my own i doubled my income from my previous job until a few years ago i had no idea what a profit and loss statement was i'm not the product of a wealthy family i'll never win the pritzker prize in fact there's a good chance you don't know me and you certainly haven't toured anything i've designed i'm a nobody and i hope you'll find that reassuring because if i can do this anyone can hey welcome to my studio this is 30 by 40 design workshop i'm eric that's my home behind me that's where i started it all back in 2013 in 2016 i built this building it sits on an island off the coast of maine maine is located in the northeastern part of the united states we're about an 11 hour drive north of new york city depending on traffic so pretty much in the middle of nowhere i built the studio that we're standing in as proof of concept that i could design the kind of creative life that i had always imagined for myself it hasn't been however without mistakes and those are mistakes that i'd never trade away because they've definitely shaped the business that i have today but they're mistakes that you don't have to make so i thought if you're contemplating going off on your own that it would be an interesting thought experiment to sort of rewind to day one and start over if i had to do it all over again this is what i would do my immediate worries on day one right or wrong they're pretty much all financial and i'm sure this has something to do with how i was raised this is me at age three i grew up in a small town north of new york city both of my parents they worked very very hard my mom didn't have the chance to go to college my dad was an educator he was actually the first in his family to go to college we lived on their very modest earnings so growing up i always remember them holding two jobs just to make ends meet we didn't own a home our school lunches were subsidized and while my parents didn't have much what they did have they gave it all away to my sister and i in fact they gave to everyone that i knew and in doing so they taught me how to squeeze everything i could out of all i had frugal it's probably a good description but they were also pretty risk-averse and as you might expect these attitudes shaped not only who i am but also the business that i created now before setting out on my own i had heard all the same advice that you probably have right you have to build up a war chest of money right to survive all the lean times and i have to admit that just the thought of saving six to 12 to 18 months of living expenses that was just completely overwhelming to me and i actually used it as an excuse for not starting my business for a really long time now when i did start out i did it with nothing in the bank now everyone's situation is unique i was fortunate at the time to have a working spouse but if you're the sole earner or you're on your own saving a runway may actually be the only way you can do this for me having no working capital was a really strong motivator if i had had 12 months of expenses saved up i certainly would have felt less pressure to take every last project that came along for sure that would have been less stressful but without the urgency to earn each month i wonder if i would have been successful not having cash in the bank forced me to hustle and it forced me to say yes to a lot of projects that i probably wouldn't have otherwise agreed to because i was so hungry see when you're first starting out everything that comes your way is kind of like a lotto ticket you don't know which ones are going to be the winners so in that sense it's good to say yes to things right you want to do a lot of scratching because they're going to lead to other opportunities and those are things that you just can't predict it's definitely not a winning long-term strategy and we'll talk about that in a moment here but on day one saying yes will expose you to more opportunities as soon as i had my first real paying client though i started to save a runway and i still have one to this day i just could never go back to working for someone else and a runway is assurance that i won't have to now the benefit of keeping cash reserves is that once you start getting clients and you start getting a regular stream of work you'll want the freedom to turn down those projects that aren't an ideal fit for you the other financial imperative on day one is to have a working budget and remember there's two sides to a budget there's income and there's expenses it's not all about how much you earn or how much you need to earn but equally about how much it costs you to live right what are your expenses lifestyle creep totally natural when you have a regular paycheck it's actually really easy to mortgage away your future because every two weeks you get this new cash infusion and it feels like you're keeping afloat when you're working for yourself your cash flows they aren't guaranteed they're just not as consistent so you have to recognize that every dollar you trim from your budget is one less that you'll have to earn to keep it all balanced now to ease the financial worries on day one we also obviously need some work and when you need work on a short time horizon your best resource is usually going to be referrals you'll need to design a system for marketing to bring new clients in to the business consistently but that all takes time to build early on my first jobs they all came as a result of referrals for my personal network of contacts so i want you to reach out to everyone you know and just let them know what you're doing right professional contacts friends family even other architects so think about where a prospective client will head first when they're contemplating a new project now for me because i do residential work that was primarily two places local realtors and local contractors now you want to mine these resources in those places first now i mentioned other architects and this really does work particularly if you know some larger firms in your area because they're not usually going to want to take on the kind of smaller projects that might actually be a perfect fit for you as you're just getting started now before you reach out you're going to need somewhere to send them to long before you need a physical studio like this you'll need a virtual one and your website will be the hub for your marketing efforts moving forward and it must answer all the basic questions every client is going to have before they reach out and contact you so your portfolio is going to show you're experienced in the kind of project your potential client is considering your about page conveys your professional qualifications and your contact page just kind of makes it easy for them to take the next step with you when i started 30 by 40 back in 2013 i had left a dream job i was designing these large high-end homes and i took with me a portfolio filled with award-winning projects and i did this all very intentionally you know working for someone else especially a firm doing the kind of work that you ultimately want to be doing on your own it's a really good way to build a portfolio you sort of get to earn while you learn right and you also make important contacts now this portfolio i thought that's going to put me at the front of the line for similar amazing projects and it did kind of see i interviewed with a lot of clients early on in each interview i worked hard to convince them that i was the right architect for them to hire right they sat across from me at my dining room table and i slid my ipad in front of them and i sold myself actually pretty hard because that's what i thought it was supposed to do look at me see this project in this one see i'm really qualified you can see this right now i was definitely capable of doing the work but as hard as i tried to sell myself to these clients the interviews they just always seemed to fall flat and i was doing something wrong so you can see here this is an email that i received after one of these early interviews that they've chosen to work with a quote more experienced firm now mind you i had been doing this for over 20 years at the time who was that more experienced firm well it was an architect friend of mine sole practitioner we graduated in the same year and our kids go to grammar school together we had very similar professional experience but in the clients eyes we just didn't measure up right i was the one who was lacking experience why was this so what i couldn't see at the time was the client with two million dollars to spend on their vacation home they actually wanted to hire the award-winning firm that i had just left they didn't want to hire an unproven new business you know that was just too risky and it also wasn't the story that they wanted to be able to tell their friends and sure i had the portfolio of work but that wasn't enough so in addition to reaching out to my network i started running other experiments to try and find new clients and one of those experiments was writing for houzz.com so when you don't have an audience it's not a bad idea to borrow someone else's and at the time they had an email list that was in the millions and a huge viewership and this writing started to bring in some new inquiries and out of desperation i started saying yes to some of these inquiries and they were less than ideal projects but i needed the income so i took on a renovation that was two and a half hours away some light commercial work and interior fit out and a small addition and at one point i remember having five projects and they were running all in various stages of design and construction and that meant five clients five budgets five contractors five sets of drawings and all the stuff that comes along with those projects and along with those smaller projects were tighter budgets and smaller fees and because they took less time to complete i always had to be searching for more i had just built myself a smaller more dysfunctional version of the firm i just left and instead of six people around to do the work it was just me doing the work of six people now when you add in the fact that the work that i was producing wasn't really anything that i wanted in my portfolio i was feeling pretty disappointed in the business that i had created see when a client comes to your business they have to be able to see their project in your portfolio so what you put out there is ultimately what you'll receive in return i didn't want more light commercial work or small renovations i wanted new high-end custom residential projects now to this day you're not going to see any of those projects those early projects in my portfolio in this moment i realized the mistake that i was making i didn't need more clients i needed better clients to make this a sustainable practice i actually needed fewer projects now part of this decision is just knowing what you want you know if you want a large portfolio of work if you want a studio full of employees that's great but you have to know what you want going into this knowing what defines success for you will allow you to work intentionally toward those goals and if you don't have these success metrics in place you're going to be in a constant state of reacting to whatever comes along i want to be intentional you know i wanted to design a business that worked for me now if you're curious my definition of success hasn't changed since i wrote it in 2013 it's three things freedom purpose and relationships the freedom to choose what i work on each day i wanted a purpose driving me forward and i wanted to have time for family and friends to share it all with the business that i created early on wasn't meeting this definition i had to rethink the business model so i think it's so interesting that we're trained as architects and designers to be creative yet somehow we forget all that we cast it aside when we start a business you know i started the same exact business as my previous employer i was serving clients one hour at a time now it was around the same time that i had started reading tim ferriss's four hour work week and the concept of divorcing time worked from fee earned seemed really appropriate to what we do as architects serving clients places us in this continual cycle that oscillates between doing the work and seeking new work entrepreneurs learn to break this cycle by innovating now my favorite definition of the term entrepreneur is by peter drucker and he says an entrepreneur is one who searches for change responds to it and exploits opportunities innovation is the tool of the entrepreneur and an effective one converts a source into a resource and that's important a source into a resource one of the things you recognize as a sole proprietor serving clients is that when you stop working you stop earning and this can keep you tied to your desk if you let it it certainly did for me when i was working with five different clients so i knew pretty early on that i wanted to divorce the relationship between time worked and fee earned and entrepreneurship was going to be the vehicle i was going to use to do that i needed to turn sources into resources now i'm definitely going to get into the specifics of this but first we need to look at this chart and this is an org chart and it's the same for every business mine yours apple tesla if it's just you starting this business you just hired yourself for every position in the chart so hey congratulations if you're worried about finding new clients one of the most important jobs on this chart is marketing but don't forget you also need to handle the finances and drafting and ordering supplies and all the high-level ceo thinking too right it's easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the work in front of you and this is why you need to begin creating assets assets earn while you do other things and you're going to deploy your assets and use them to fill many of the positions in your org chart they're actually very few jobs in your org chart that you're best suited to do ceo that's the highest paying one you're definitely the only person qualified for that one now ideally we want you doing only those jobs where your talents can be best used serving clients that's another one but that takes time right the entrepreneur recognizes that leveraging what you're best at all that time investment to create resources it's not only smart it's innovative so if you're going to spend time with your client you might as well convert the byproducts of all that hard work into resources source into resource now i know what you're thinking sounds great conceptually right but how exactly does this work i've done this many different ways but this is the most recent and i'd say probably the most refined process that i've created it repurposes the byproducts of the design process all the things that i'm already doing while i'm working with clients and it turns them into resources and for me the primary form this takes right now is video so this is often referred to as content marketing where you publish long firm content and that captures this kind of broad spectrum of people who are searching around these topics some are going to be potential clients and some will just be casual viewers and i'll make what's called pillar content and that kind of serves as the hub for all of my marketing efforts and passive income generation it's the chassis that i build everything else on top of so here i want you to meet ed and cynthia they found me on youtube and eventually we met together here in the studio and actually i tried to push them toward the product side of my business because i thought their budget was just a little bit too low at the time but we sat here and we met together and i really liked them and their project actually sounded pretty interesting to me so after some discussion they agreed to share the entire process of working together all the way from design all the way through construction on my youtube channel almost everything and there are certain details that had to remain confidential budget contacts things like that now not every client is going to be willing to do this certainly and i was working with another client at that exact same time and that did not agree to it in fact when i explained what i was hoping to do they made me sign an nda to prevent me from sharing anything so these are unique clients in some ways but they're out there now this first video here this is the one that i made after visiting their site and we called their project the outpost because it's kind of on this fairly remote island here in maine and we wanted to kind of build this story around it and that first video you'll see it's just me trying to find my voice and trying to figure out what i want to do you know you can see it's a pretty rudimentary camera setup i was a crew of one i just kind of set the camera between my legs in the grass and we were sitting in this spot that was going to become the future site of their home and these are discussions that we as architects and designers we have these all the time with our clients right the difference is i just chose to document these meetings and share everything we were discussing so everyone else could see what that process looks like now i referred to this earlier as content marketing right but marketing for me kind of always had this negative connotation this doesn't feel like marketing to me it feels like part of a creative practice you know i think of it as filmmaking visual storytelling i'm just sharing the story of what it's like to design a home with me it's definitely marketing though and remember working with an architect is something very few people are able to do in their lives so people are unfamiliar with the process but they're actually really curious about what it's like now your client is essentially buying your design process when they hire you but they don't really know that so this method of sharing what you do openly in videos it lets them see exactly what they're getting you know you're educating them about what it is you do and the value of it and how you do it you're essentially creating the faq for your website you know and you're also indoctrinating them in your process and at the same time you're just proving that you're qualified now this may seem kind of counterintuitive right to share everything you know and everything you're doing you know if you share it all then why would anyone hire you the fact is though all those people who watch your video and they want to diy their project they want to do it themselves they were never going to hire you anyway those actually aren't good clients if you share what you know you're helping those people get to where they want to be and then they realize that they don't actually need you to do what they wanted and that's actually great because that saves you all the time you might typically waste with tire kicking and brain picking clients who are never going to hire you anyway i can't tell you how many times i sat in this studio or visited someone's house to review their project and i gave tons of free advice away and they only turned out to be tire kicking you know clients they were just searching for ideas it was total waste of time now as you're sharing this you'll also come to learn that there are also those people who see what you're doing and all the knowledge that you're sharing and they actually value it and they're the ones who start to recognize that they can't actually do it themselves that there's just too much at stake financially and they see that you're actually the best person to help them get what they need and these are actually not coincidentally much better clients you're naturally selecting for those clients who like what you do and how you do it and by the time they contact you they don't need to be convinced you're the right person to help them their mind is already made up so when ed and cynthia this couple came to my studio there were no questions about fees you know i didn't have to slide my ipad across the table to sell them this wasn't an interview it was a conversation in fact i remember coming away from it thinking wow this is way too easy i mean these people just hired me without vetting me which isn't really true i mean they got to know me from watching all my video content they were reading my blog posts and scanning my instagram and pinterest feeds by the time they made the appointment to meet me here in the studio they actually already hired me i just didn't know it yet now why was this so different than those early interviews that we talked about in those early interviews i sat across the table from these potential clients and actually viewed them as kind of adversaries right i had to win them over now the difference here was now i was just helping now i pictured myself seated beside these clients and my goal was singular you know how can i help these clients get exactly what they're after maybe i'm the best person to help them do that and maybe i'm not either way at the end of this meeting i will have helped them take the next step helping is just so much easier than pitching you know prospective clients they actually find this irresistible because you've made your interaction about them it's not about you it's not about your portfolio it's about them their house their budget their history their site you know without the pressure to win over a prospective client i actually started to really look forward to these meetings rather than to worry about say losing a job i would just say to myself this was never a job you had you know until a few days ago you didn't know about this project you didn't know these clients even existed so just be helpful you know if it's the right fit it'll be clear and this subtle shift relieved the stress to perform and as i focused on being helpful this projected confidence and that's what was missing now with the outpost all i'm doing is just documenting as i create as i design the lighting plan i put a camera overhead and i record exactly what i'm doing you know the videos in this series they're just all related to process and you'll notice that the concepts very similar to the meeting that i just described how can i be helpful so in pre-design i made videos focused on programming and site analysis i talked about how i interview contractors for the job how to develop a budget i made a video on building a site model while i was making it during design development i shared all the presentations that i made with the clients and you can see their reactions to my design ideas both positive and negative and of course you can see the mistakes that i made along the way and these real world interactions just kind of peek behind the curtain helps people get to know me kind of humanizes me and it shows that you know i'm not perfect i'm just showing my future clients what it's going to be like to work together and they can see it all meetings designs sketches process and it all becomes fodder to convert into helpful resources so hopefully you can start to see this kind of shift that the business has made now this entrepreneurial shift so instead of trading hours for dollars we're creating assets that we can deploy to earn for us when we're not working at our desk when we're on vacation or sleeping or we're off exercising right so now we essentially have a business that's split into two parts we have the side that works with clients that's the service side and we have a product side to the business and that's where we're creating these assets so on the service side for every hour that i'm working with these clients i earn my hourly rate which by the way is not the same rate that i charged when i was moonlighting before setting off on my own when you're in business your hourly rate has to cover all of your operating expenses you have to earn a reasonable wage right you have to pay for health care you have to cover your retirement and it also actually has to be profitable in fact the us government here won't consider your entity a real business if you don't earn a profit it's a hobby otherwise right makes sense on the product side we're taking the byproducts of our design process as we're working with these clients and we're converting those into assets and resources and these resources work for us around the clock hopefully earning more money they're sort of bringing new clients into the business marketing and they're building brand awareness now the services side of the business the client work it's definitely lucrative but it's also really high touch it takes a lot of time to do this right we can't make more time so we're limited on what we can earn on that side of the business the other thing we have to appreciate is that not every client that comes along will be a good fit we want to select only those high value projects and for everyone else we want to direct them to the product side we can't afford to work with them or we're going to fall into this cycle of low budgets and quick turnarounds that we talked about earlier now where i live we have this very limited zone of opportunity in between winters when clients are here and they're shopping for land and they're getting ready to hire an architect so the product side of the business that's positioned to throw off revenue in those leaner times and then it helps supplement your income and build a runway in the good times now you may even find that it starts to exceed the revenues from your client service work at some point and that shouldn't be surprising to you because although the product side of the business is less lucrative it doesn't consume any time and from a revenue standpoint that's infinitely scalable we make a product once and we can sell it as many times as we'd like so unlike selling our time which has a fixed margin products have an ever increasing margin now to truly make this work we need two elements and we've been discussing the client side right they provide the product but we also need an audience to support the product side of the business now when we began talking about marketing and you needed clients right away you started with your network that's a more immediate solution but the problem with referrals is that you're probably not top of mind for most people in your network right people aren't just sitting around thinking about how they can refer new work to you when you invest in social media you're building an audience of people to do that for you so ideally it's going to spin some new clients your way but just having an audience offers you the entrepreneur a lot more leverage not only their passive income opportunities but having a targeted group of people who care about your work and who are going to return when you make new things people who support you and who will share what you're doing without you even having to ask that kind of an audience has real value in today's market now there's an essay by the founder of wired magazine kevin kelly it's entitled a thousand true fans and the idea is this if you build an audience of one thousand people and find a way for each of them to pay you a hundred dollars a year that's a pretty good livable income in most places around the world now a thousand people probably sounds like a lot especially if you're sitting at zero currently but if you start making and sharing and curating valuable content a thousand true fans who really like what you do it's actually a very attainable number so where would i build an audience if i were starting from nothing today well today we're obviously all competing for attention online in search results and personally i don't like competition all that much you know i'd prefer to be the only result in search if i can so how do you stand out and search well for one you need to make content that's relevant to those things that people are actually searching for you also want to be where people are doing the searching and you also want to consider the barrier to entry so it's pretty easy to post a photo to instagram right if it's easy to do you can guarantee you're going to have a lot more competition now if i had to do it all over again i'd still invest my time building an audience on youtube now i know what you're thinking of course he's going to recommend youtube because you know that's what worked for him but i want you to hear me out youtube is the second largest search engine in the world and it's owned by the largest people search youtube looking for answers to their questions so we know there's intent behind what they're doing on youtube they want solutions to their pain points right and then for architects and designers youtube's perfect because it's a visual platform and video is a chance for someone to see and hear from you directly now when you consider that youtube's algorithm is designed to surface helpful new and relevant content even if it's from smaller creators and they'll put it right alongside the content from the sort of mega creators it gives you a lot of power now you can't really say those things about facebook and that's the only other social platform that even comes close to youtube in terms of daily user count the power of video from a marketing standpoint is that people feel like they know you and i get this all the time you know people meet me and they say eric i feel like i know you already and that really gives me a leg up on the like and trust factors too now when i first started 30x40 i knew nothing about making video zero but the real reason i chose it was because it was more difficult than anything else to make and because it's difficult to make i reasoned that you know there'd just be less competition fewer people doing it competition would be lower and i do believe that is still true today there are fewer people making video just it's harder to make right now do you have to make video no but you should just be aware that if you want to compete with fewer people you have to do the things that fewer people are doing most importantly just be creative be different you know now the other thing you should take into account is what you enjoy making i love making videos you know some people like writing some people like audio recording a podcast when you do what you love all of this becomes easier because you'll be able to sustain the effort that it's going to take so which platform is going to work best for you well it really depends and i want you to experiment i want you to try different ones see what works see what you like see what doesn't work i'm always looking for new ways to fail because failure is just the fastest way to learn now once i've made this pillar piece of content right this video i start converting it into other resources and i mentioned how my parents taught me to get everything i could out of all that i have and this is the perfect example of just wringing out all the value of one piece of content so here's what i do with it so number one there's advertising revenue and as long as people are watching this video on youtube it continues to increase over time there's affiliate revenue from products and services that kind of complement the video i will often create free downloadable resources that complement whatever topic i'm talking about and then i use those to build an email list now once you have an email list then you can notify them each time you make something new and by the way that's the surest path to reach your a thousand true fans we're not going to get into the details of building an email list but it is part of the strategy here so i write a blog post on my site and that provides some additional context it also links out to all the contents of my kit you know all the gear that i use so i sell digital templates drawings audio content digital books i also have physical products that i can sell books prints plan sets you know maybe merch the video content can also be repurposed into other paid content like a course you know just because you're publishing free content on youtube doesn't mean you can't reserve some of the best stuff and put that into a paid course and in fact i'm doing that with the outpost series right now there are things that i'm not sharing publicly because they're going into the course so you can imagine creating say a 14 part series and you know at the end of part 10 you say hey you want to see how this all turns out you can purchase the last four episodes right over here that kind of thing right i also edit some of the b-roll footage that you see in my videos i edit those down into these short clips and then i upload those to a stock footage site which sends me commissions at the end of each month and then there's you know something that's more difficult to measure but no less valuable is that the videos help me build my social following and they improve my social reach so shorter versions of the video i upload those to pinterest i upload the full length one to igtv and then you know instagram i do a story or a post and then i've even been experimenting with tik tok you know social following has real value with brands these days and it can be monetized through brand partners looking for access to an audience so you can check socialbluebook.com and you can actually see what your social following is worth right now so making and posting videos takes a lot of time this is a long marketing play and you can't expect immediate results you can't give up after 20 posts in fact your first 50 posts probably going to be terrible right so you can go look at mine if you need some proof with practice the quality is going to improve and you're going to want to do more and you'll start earning more and that will make you want to do even more you know you're kind of turning this giant flywheel and it's difficult to overcome the inertia in the beginning but once it's in motion this momentum is going to start feeding cash into the business each month and it's going to allow you to build a longer and longer financial runway which in turn buys you more freedom to make the choices about what you want to make next now you're probably also thinking well how am i supposed to do all this make all this content do all the work at the same time you know that's precisely why you need fewer projects if you take fewer projects you'll want them to have bigger budgets right instead of five projects with five tiny budgets why not hold out for that one project with five times the budget you know as i had this realization that i needed fewer projects i stopped saying yes to those renovations that were two and a half hours away i stopped doing commercial work and i made an intentional choice to move away from a client that i had this long-term relationship with because i just didn't want more of that work and it was a difficult choice at the time because it was a lot of revenue that i left on the table but it just wasn't creating more freedom or purpose in my life and it certainly wasn't allowing me to spend more time with my friends and family i'm gonna give you one last example before i close because we've been discussing how entrepreneurs look for change and act on opportunity and this is a time of change and opportunity right now so here's an example to kind of take it even further like it or not we've all had to make this massive shift to working from our home these days and if you've been on youtube at all you've probably noticed there's been this proliferation of content around people's work from home setups right changing work environments it's like perfect opportunity for architects and designers to weigh in so i took a critical look around the studio workspace here and i recognized that you know we kind of needed to adapt to our new normal my wife is running her research lab from our home my children they're learning remotely i have a summer intern here and you know i just i need to accommodate fewer meetings so i thought to myself how does this space need to change and adapt to this new reality how can i be helpful so i made some subtle shifts i rearranged things added some storage i kind of did restyling on the interior and as i did that i filmed it all you know from the planning through the execution and then i curated detailed resources for anyone who was hoping to do the same now i didn't do it because i wanted an influx of new office renovation work certainly not i just did it to be helpful so here's some of the sources that i turned into resources first there's the video itself right in the first few weeks it's been viewed close to 300 000 times and i'll continue to earn advertising revenue from this video probably for a number of years so then i also created a blog post and that has very specific details and links to all the products i use i'll link that out on kit.com now i expect these commissions they too will continue for years as well and at the holidays they're going to be particularly large so then a brand reached out and they said hey we'll give you a standing desk for free just you know if you give us a mention in the video so we have that there's other brands that have since reached out having seen that and i'm starting to negotiate partnerships with them for future video projects i've uploaded shorter firm versions of the video to instagram to igtv and pinterest and i'm starting to diversify my audience there i take the b-roll clips those are earning commissions from blackbox the interactive video cards they link out to other video content i've made which helps correlate my content with other popular videos in the space and it also increases my watch time and authority there i think i gained something like 35 000 followers from that video in the first week i got another thousand followers on instagram there's a link in the video to sign up for my email list and they get access to these resources which are kind of dripped out over time hopefully you get the point you know nothing goes to waste here and all of it is designed to meet my audience where they're at some may be in the mood to buy a 20 pair of sketchbooks others a two thousand dollar plan set and every once in a while one of them wants a two million dollar custom house and i'm there for all of them i hope this presentation has given you the confidence to know you can do this too now i want to end with the same three words that i end all of my videos with and that is go make things it's the best parting advice i can give to any creative person not aimless making though i want you to make things with intent i want you to go make things through your own weird idiosyncratic lens these are just a few of my personal heroes i've studied them closely i know their influences i've sampled their worlds i've tried to solve problems as they would have and like my heroes before me i forged these influences into my own proprietary blend of traits and tricks skills and sops i cherry picked all those things that i admired most from each and i used them to cobble together a code kind of an operating system of my own making i realized that i could beat all the things my heroes were i didn't need permission i just needed to make things so i would ask you who are your heroes who has shaped who you are today who coded your operating system it's your turn to go make things [Music] you

Channel: 30X40 Design Workshop

Views: 43,782

Rating: 4.9814878 out of 5

Keywords: architect, architecture, architecture tutorial, architecture school, architecture students, 30x40, 30x40 design workshop

Id: 0S2T6crurEE

Length: 37min 49sec (2269 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021