Designing the Practice: Mentorship, Mindset, and Building a Strong Firm | EP675

0:00Hopefully one of the nuggets that our listeners are hearing is just that encouragement to not be isolated, but to reach out to individuals who can be part of that success journey. Hello, Architect Nation, and welcome back. I'm Enix Sears, and this is the right place for you if you run an architectural practice, landscape, architecture, practice, engineering firm. On today's episode, you'll discover how this residential firm used small scope projects, like decks, trellises, permits, and bathroom renovations, to become a published, acknowledged, and well-awarded architectural practice in the residential design sphere. You'll discover how this firm uses a counterintuitive day one team building strategy before designing a single project, and how this firm owner funded early salaries in the practice without investor money, big overhead, or fancy offices. You'll also discover the hiring and culture system behind a rare high-performance feedback environment in this firm, plus four simple step hiring filter that he borrowed from who that helps avoid costly people

1:04mistakes. In today's episode, I sit down with Anthony Laney, founding partner of Laney LA, a Los Angeles-based studio known for crafting thoughtful and exquisite residential architecture. You will see their award-winning work in magazines such as Architectural Digest, Dwell, as well as Dessene. Anthony is a leading voice on design process and creative entrepreneurship. He recently also released their monograph, Poetics of Home, which in their words is a reflective exploration of memory, identity, and belonging in architecture. And what that here is today's episode. Anthony, welcome to the Business of Architecture podcast. Thanks for having me, Anik. Yeah, good to have you here. That's so exciting because I remember when you sent me that little video clip. I remember back in the day when you were featured, was it a city bank commercial? I do, yes, for a credit card, actually. Yeah, yeah. Kind of random. Yeah. They found me on Twitter and they said, hey, you're an architect. Would you like to be in a commercial? And I have the habit of saying sure. Yeah, that was cool. It was like, you know, our both little claim to fame

2:06there back in. Shoot, what about 2016 or something, probably. Yeah. So I'm so, so I've had to be with you because you have just this incredible success story of being in business for 11 years, producing just incredible, incredible work. We have your book here. We'll post some images of that. Thank you. But really, this is an area in which so many, there's a lot of residential firms that struggle. There's a lot of residential firms who have big dreams. They want to do big work, but they have a lot of difficulty getting out into the market. So let's start with what started this vision for you. What, what was the inspiration to jump out of the firm where you were working? I had a mentor in my life, tap me on the shoulder and say, Anthony, you're not running on all cylinders. And I said, you don't know you're talking about, I love the projects I'm working on. They let me do all the design. And he then said, but do you get to set the culture of the firm? Do you get to decide who to hire and fire? Do you decide the premise of the project? Do you decide how to market and strategically

3:08pursue clients? And I said, no. And I do think I have the gift of being good at taking advice. And so he said, trust me, you're not operating on all cylinders. So I went to my boss and I said, I think I have the ambition to do what you did. I'll be here as long as you need. And I ended up being there six months. He asked me to hire and train my replacement. I think it's important to leave well. And then we opened our doors and announced to the world that we're here to do small projects and started in our garage. And we started taking on tiny residential work. Wow. Yeah. How do you find this mentor? Tell me about that. Was it a family friend? It sounds like such amazing opportunity for some wisdom in your life. Well, I like how you started where there are a lot of residential practices who do struggle. And in my personal opinion, a lot of that comes from being too isolated and not considering the design of the practice, but focusing all the energy

4:14on the design of the project. And so I think I've just had the good fortune of being connected to expecting mentorship as a baseline. So I've always had mentors speaking into my life. I still have that today. And without that, I probably wouldn't have taken that leap. So I'm grateful for that nudge. Often that's what mentors do in my life. I'm out of straight from your question a little bit. So you might need to bring me back. I love where you're going because I was going to ask you this as well. So let's let's go there, which is mentors. Tell me about mentorship because I know I know one of the personal business coaches you've hired. He's a personal friend. I know you still listen. And you perhaps still listen to business of architecture podcast occasionally. So you're in this idea of designing the practice is very much what we talk about. Correct. Business of architecture. Yes. If we have the ambition to grow either numerically or in terms of our virtue and excellence, it only makes sense for us to align our lives with those who are ahead of us. And so

5:15I mean, in architecture school and even before architecture school, it just seemed to make sense to me to actively initiate conversations with those who I admired in different categories. And so yes, right now mentorship looks like there are some people who I pay, some people who it's a co-mentorship, some people who do it out of the goodness of their heart. And some people are mentors, though I've never even met them. I just admire them from a distance and I subscribe to their content. But that's a big part of what fills me and inspires me. And yes, at the time the gentleman who spoke into my life, Darren was a family friend. But Darren is also surrounded by a network of other individuals who have a more paid relationship, a more formal relationship, where yes, it's a transaction. But I feel like I'm getting the better into that deal. I mean, that sounds like a really loving thing for him to do to actually have that conversation with you. Yeah. It can be difficult to help other people understand

6:19that they may not be living up to their potential. Yes, yes, because that's a type of feedback that not everyone might be open to. He saw something in me that I didn't yet see in myself. So in the framework of the Johairi window, that's the blind window. So he saw something that I didn't see. And I'm grateful that I decided to take the next step in pursuing or trusting that given his pedigree and his accomplishments, I had no reason to be skeptical about what he was saying. And I think the cool thing around residential practices, it is possible to start small. And so failing small is a lot easier than failing big. What do you mean feeling small is a lot easier than feeling big? A failing small. Me? Failing small. Got it. For me to deploy or execute his advice, it didn't mean taking out a big loan or mortgaging my entire family. It meant transitioning

7:19from my current practice as an employee and seeing if I could find projects and do small work. So yes, it was risky. But in the grand scheme of things, I could always go back. Yeah. Where did you tell me about that? Because I remember when I was working at the last architecture for my work that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. This would have been 15 years ago or so. And I remember just the fear of I had such a good job as paying such good money with so consistent, so stable. I ended up getting fired from that job. Whole another story that I've told here on the podcast. But I don't know if I would have taken that leap without actually having gotten kicked out the door, which was amazing. And I think that's a popular route. It often takes some something provocative to steer us in a new direction. I think my life has been marked by that in many seasons. But in terms of long-term practice, my story was just a little bit different. I had that mentor speak into my life and say, give it a shot. And my boss was generous enough to be open to that transition.

8:27Yeah. Love that. Now you've continued to hire mentors. Yes. You hired a coach as a mutual friend of ours. Correct. Business coach to get coaching in your business. Why? Because so many firm owners that I know, they're in this idea that they need to figure things out themselves, that they should know everything, that it's just the way it is to struggle. So what prompted that? That never made sense to me. I mean, even as you're describing it, it doesn't sound rational. Maybe to some listeners it would. And I realize that's a popular framework. But to me, it just makes sense that if I have ambitions that provide a gap from where I am today, why not identify the experts who have already done that, or have who have something to share in that direction? And so the mentors could be in the direction of architecture specifically, like the gentleman we're referring to. It could be related exclusively to business or finance or relationships. But I think we all know people ahead of us have a lot

9:32to teach us. And I've benefited from that so much. And if it doesn't work out, you move on. Well, and for my experience, it stems from, so I really thought a lot about there's this idea of a scarcity mentality and abundance mentality, right? We had a guest in the podcast a little while ago, one of the principles at KFA, I'm sure you've, you know, the firm. And he just was exuding, he just really was presenting this very beautiful abundance mentality in the way that he talked, the way that he talks about hiring. And it just said, so refreshing. Because for myself, I know, as a young child and early on teenagers, and even recently in my life, very much driven by scarcity conversation. Even today, it rears its head. Meaning there's not enough. So in, for instance, hiring a coach or hiring a mentor, ooh, that sounds expensive. I don't have enough money. Right? It's easy to look at like the, I don't have enough to be able to do that. I don't have enough to hire the employee. Whereas if we come from an abundance conversation, there's more faith involved. There's more, you know, yeah, I, maybe I'll have all the money right now, but I'm going to

10:34make an investment. I'm not going to work. Yes. What's your, what's your relationship with that abundance versus scarcity mentality? I think you nailed it. I think that change is scary for most people. And even though there's a certain appetite for learning, I think often the uncertainty of that keeps us in our current trajectory. And there are goals that I've set that when I don't make progress in them, that reflects back to me that I must want the stability of what I currently have more than the uncomfortableness of change. And so that uncomfortableness, like you mentioned, could be initiated by a surprising negative change, or it could be someone speaking into our life at the right moment where we're open and that appetite fuels us. And so I think of it a little bit like a seesaw. Like, do I want the change more than I want the stability of my current momentum?

11:38And I think I just, I'm grateful I have an orientation toward change. If all things were equal, I'd rather do something different. And so part of me is just attracted to the experimentation of, I'm definitely going to learn more, whether even if this is a bad idea, I'm going to learn more if I take this leap, if I hire this consultant, even if it doesn't work out, I'm going to learn way more than if I didn't. And so I'm just so attracted to that. Yeah, love that. You know, and I've always been fascinated with the human psychology behind success because when I started this podcast back in 2012, I was looking for the outward signs of success. Like what did it take to run a successful architectural practice? What are the ABC things that need to happen? The steps to do that. The steps to give me, give me the roadmap, right? Just show me what to do. Yes. And certainly there is a roadmap that are things to do. And yet what I saw when I started to interview different architects, both successful and other ones who maybe were struggling more. Okay. I noticed that a lot of the architects who had a lot of success, they couldn't even talk

12:42about why they were successful. They couldn't identify it. They would just say, well, I just did good work. And you talked to ones who were, you know, maybe not so successful, struggling, or day to day, or paycheck to paycheck, or feast or famine cycle. And they'd say that, well, I do good work too. And they did. They did good work. So what's the difference? Yeah, what is the difference? Right? You talked about this window idea. Tell me because I hadn't heard that before. You said the blind spots. Yeah. So it's, it's a Punnett square. It's called a Joe Hari window. Joe, that's new for me. How do you spell that? J-O-H-A-R-I. And it's, it's simply a, a four quadrant diagram that illustrates that there are things that you know about you that I don't. There are things that I know about you that you don't. And there are things that we both know. And there are things that neither one of us know. And the goal is to, in a relationship, make what we both know as big as possible. And we're, and it also just helps bring in an awareness

13:44that there are things that the rest of the world knows about you that you don't. And those are our blind spots. And so that's, I think where mentors can be so critical. And so for someone to not pursue mentorship, I think two things would have, they would have to have two beliefs. One, they don't have any blind windows. And two, they have nothing to learn from this mentor. And to me, that's so illogical. And you know, not every single consultant I've hired has worked out. But that's okay. We keep swinging. Yeah, I hear you. I've, I've invested, I'm not even mentioning them out, but a lot of money, a lot of money in mentorship coaches. And you're right. There's been somewhere, I've, I'm going to say struck out, but there's somewhere, you know, it wasn't super valuable. It was a big investment. It wasn't the most valuable thing. But it's sort of like the venture funds, right? They're like, they bet, they bet. And like, so number one, yeah. Pass your book over here. So you have this amazing, amazing, what do you call us? You call us a monograph? I mean, that's what we're calling it. We're calling it the debut

14:47monograph. Yes. Nine projects, stories of nine clients, all of them homes, all of them very near and dear to our heart. As you know, architecture takes a lot of patience. And so for us to win the work and execute the work and move these families in and then tell the stories for us, it took a long time. So it's just, it's fun and meaningful, especially for my team, to see it package in a way that celebrates that accomplishment. And these, I mean, these homes are just exquisite. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well done. I appreciate that. And you know, I remember it's easy for because, yeah, I mean, you're in the top 1% of architects. Let's face it, you know, residential. If we had to rank, we're not here to rank people, but this is damn amazing. I appreciate that. Now, when people look at this, and here's one I like to do when I like to dig in, you know, this is a work of texture is there's the Anthony Laney that we see here. There's the design,

15:48there's the the outward trappings, the team members that you have. But then when I talk to you right now, I can tell there's, there's success psychology happening behind what you're talking about. First of all, you're aware of idea of blind spots, right? You talked about information, like when I'm not meeting a goal, it's just information. Yes, it's just information, right? Yes. And then I get to decide, what is this actually telling me? Yes. Yes. Again, I have, it would be so rare for me to meet an architect who doesn't have a passion for design. But it's very popular for me to meet architects who combine that passion with frustration in the other components of running a practice. And I think one of the gifts I have this might sound ironic is I think I'm average at design. And I think that my passion or genius is more in the direction of team building. And therefore, I'm required to surround myself with people who are way above average, maybe even exceptional at

16:48design and and exceptional at the parts of the process that I'm just not good at. And so when my weakness is so obvious, when I can surround myself with mentors who help me see what my strengths and weaknesses are, that brings an awareness that I think is a superpower to team building. And I don't want to claim to have more self-awareness in other architects, but we both know it's a team sport. And so if you detect something related to success psychology, my guess is that I embrace reality when it comes to my own strengths and weaknesses and therefore find joy in connecting with other people, employees and mentors so that what we do together is can outperform what I could do on my own. And I really love that that dynamic. I get that. Yeah. Embracing reality. Yes. Yes. Or or fight it. No thanks. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So you say you're an average designer. I mean, these

17:51personally, personally, personally, but that's because of other teammates that I have. Absolutely. I mean, the quality level of detail is just phenomenal. I appreciate that. Absolutely. I appreciate that. So I've seen your early designs and I would say you're a good designer. I appreciate that. When did you begin to supplement the design team? Because that's very interesting. Not many architects do that. Day one. Day one. Tell me about that. Yes. In architecture school, I think the best and the worst parts are the team assignments. There's so much joy in aligning human energy and there's so much heartbreak from the inequality of that experience. And so I think that that taught me early on that I do have an ability to align human energy. That's part of my ability. And so from day one, literally in our garage before designing the first project, I was joined by two young designers, both of whom had true design horsepower. And as a small team of four, my wife and them and I,

18:55our first project were created. And so there was literally never a time where it was just me doing the work. It was always a group effort. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Yeah. And how did you how did you fund the sellers at that early stage? Great question. My mentor who encouraged me to try this entrepreneurial leap advised me to save up six months of expenses before taking the leap. And so we were austere in accomplishing that goal. And so we self-funded the salaries for the first few months. And we were though because we bootstrapped it, expenses were so tiny that we were able to be cash flow positive, even within the first few months. I mean, we were working in a non-air conditioned garage. All you need is a laptop and some software. You can get to work. Yeah. I mean, I imagine looking back on those days is probably just nostalgic and joyful.

19:56It is. I'm so grateful for the team who joined us in those early days. It's fun to see them thriving. Both of these individuals have their own practices. They're thriving. And I also, I would never want to go back because I do think I'm operating more in my gifting today with a slightly bigger team than I was back then. And it's also just such a privilege that creative opportunity on projects of a certain scale and budget are just so rewarding. And so I must say I do love how scale and complexity every year projects are increasing. I really like that change and that challenge. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about how did you get those early projects? Yes. So I learned that there was a gap in the market where clients who expected high-level service with a white glove experience had small scope projects. These are decks and trellises and hot tubs and pool permits

20:58and bathroom renovations. And so the name brand architects were not pursuing that sort of work. And so one thing that really worked was I reached out to every architect who was turning down that work and I just made a promise. I said, I promise I will make you look good by referring us this work. And so that was really the genesis of us doing a high volume of small projects where we just promised white glove service and our goal was literally to have that client thank the referral source. And now I have the privilege of having a pretty large network of firms that I get to refer because we have to be selective with the projects that we tackle. And it's just such a joy to talk to a young architect and say, you have to promise me to take care of this client if I'm going to refer you to them. And I've had those clients come back to me and thank me for that. So I just, perhaps it's related to the abundance mindset, but I was so helped by more established architects who were receiving opportunities that to them were not attractive. And to me, I'm like,

22:00I'll take that. Of course, I'll take that. I'll design a garden. Let's go. Beautiful. Beautiful. So tell me, tell me about hiring. So we'd look at hiring. Hiring could be challenging. Do you have any formal training in hiring? What have been some of the mistakes and the successes that you've learned in hiring? Yes. What I want to hire everyone I meet, but I have a colleague who is the opposite, who is really good at filtering the right person from the wrong person. And so we have a system that we've basically borrowed from Jeff Smart. He wrote a book called Who, I believe, and his system is in the, we have a screening call is step one, where you're just trying to screen for crazy. It's very short. The second step is we interview only for core values or the person. Are they the sort of individual who would be a cultural contributor to our team? The third interview would be for the role. Do they have the ability to be

23:06excellent in the role in a short amount of time? And the fourth step would be reference checks. And we try to make the top of our funnel as wide as possible. So I'm not exaggerating. We'll probably interact with 50 candidates to find one. And we just don't complain about that. We just know that we are looking for the right fit and are devoting the calories to have those conversations to make that conversion. I realize that that could be a critique to maybe that's an inefficient process. But I think we have pretty awesome team. And that's the process that has led to that. It does require clarity on what our core values are and clarity on the KPIs or the key performance indicators for each of their roles. So with those two things clear, what we try to do with hiring for any candidate is not persuade each other that we're a good fit. I don't sell them. I just ask that they don't sell me. I say, we're sitting next to each other looking at this role or saying,

24:07are you a good fit for this role? If not, let me introduce you to another architect. I think we have the shared goal of determining do we have a fit or don't we have a fit here? Yeah, I love that. I love that. And that was one thing that I learned early on in my career was because I was coming a lot of times out of a scarcity mentality. A lot of times I wanted the job whether or not it was a good fit for me. Yeah. Right. And I'm sure a lot of employees feel that way. They're just like, I just need this job and they don't have the maturity to understand that it's going to be better for you in the long run to find the job that's a fit for you. Yes. And I think even with that sort of mentality, if I say to them, can we agree that our shared objective is to determine if this is a good fit? I think I can move them into that mindset a little bit more rather than me telling them how great our firm is and them telling me how great of a candidate they are. Yeah, I don't think that is as helpful. And I will disclose. I will say, can I tell you the

25:07thing that surprises most of the people who start working here? I want to be open with you about the thing that negatively surprises them. And I'm trying to be transparent with that. Yeah. What do you say? Well, the number one feedback that I get is that they've never been in an environment with such intense feedback. And so that's profound. Yeah, we are. Okay. We believe that feedback is a gift and therefore the more the better, I can give you a ton of feedback. It's up to you. What you want to do with it? Disregard it. Save it for later. Fully implemented. We say that feedback is either appreciation, coaching, or evaluation. It's really good not to get those confused, but we give it constantly. And everyone will say, I like feedback. I've literally never met a candidate who would say, I don't like feedback, but you can read in their countenance. I think it comes from American architecture schools, where they relate their work to their identity. And so when I critique their work,

26:11I can see they're crushed. And I say, hold on a second. Hold on a second. I'm not critiquing you. We together, this is a meritocracy. We're trying to let the best idea win. So of course, we think clear as kind, we're going to be truthful. Let's not hold back anything. We do not want artificial harmony here. But I think a lot of American architecture graduate students are uncomfortable with that amount of feedback. Absolutely. I mean, even me and my own personal growth journey, this has just been huge, where certainly my own personal feeling of feedback was very tied in with myself worth or how I viewed myself. Correct. If someone gave me some negative feedback, then that would throw me into a bit of a tailspin or worry about rejection or not enough or the little part of me that wants to be right. That's right. Those are identity triggers or truth triggers or relational triggers. How did you develop that powerful

27:13culture of feedback? Because that is so rare and you're right without the right amount of coaching, framing and compassion. There's a lot of people that just will not, it would be too much for them. They're just not at the point where they can take that on. Like, feedback. How did you learn that? I learned it directly from a book called Thanks for the Feedback. It's one of my favorite books and I do think it helped me be able to articulate what I might have always known or felt was true. But I also think I had the good fortune not only with my wife who's my co-founder, but with some of my early hires. These are just individuals who were rare in that they truly valued the gift of feedback. They want a truth more than they wanted comfort. I think that created a little bit of a, just a culture that started to attract and repel a sort of person. So once you have a critical mass where someone is in a big meeting, a design meeting and a entry-level designer critiques the founder and the founder has a

28:18big smile on their face and is like, this bumping, but like, actually he's right. Everyone who watches that is realizing, oh, that's what we do here. We just say it. And oh, if you communicate in a way that smells like artificial harmony, you're going to be called out. That's even worse to do. And I think thankfully we just have a culture where people are not, we don't tend to skew toward aggressive. And so if someone truly believes that we have their back, then we can have conversations about almost anything and they can always accept or reject the feedback, but we definitely want to have it on the table. So I do think that is something that as I survey other architecture firms is a bit more unique for us. That's our crazy culture. That's an understatement. That's a bit unique for companies in general. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. I think the high-performance teams that I've been on, in my opinion, tend to skew toward clear as kind. We want the truth, tell it like it is.

29:24And that does not need to breed competitiveness, especially if I'm certain that you have my back. I love that, love that. You talked about identity. What I love about that is what can get in the way of that feedback is what we might call the ego, which is our projections, our programming, our self-projected identity, who we think we are. So if I'm presenting a project to Anthony, here's what I came up for this floor plan. And I think that I'm the floor plan. I think that that represents my uniqueness or my work. That we've already lost. Yeah, yeah. And you're like, well, man, you know, I can't, you know, we've been over this a couple of times, like you keep on doing this. Yeah. And I'm crushed. And it's difficult. So powerful to be able to, it sounds like what you've been able to create is an organization where people have tamed their egos. I was talking to a good friend of mine. He's, um, dude, this guy is on fire. He's like early 20s. He's in the sales profession, Persian guy from Canada, lives in Montreal. And I met him at one of the retreat

30:29conferences I went to just totally lit up. Okay. All right. Passionate. Yeah. Passionate guy. And he was, he explained that you go to me this way because we were, we were talking a lot about this idea of feedback and how important it is. Yeah. And how when you get feedback, is easy to, um, a lot of times our ego wants to be defensive against that. That's so natural. Right. Wallace, come up naturally. Yes. Right. You're on the playground. Little kid critiques your red shirt. Yes. You feel threatened. It builds in early on in our, in our lives where we want to defend ourselves. So he said, there's two ways we can do it, right? We can have, we can have the ego that, that, um, like, feels we're superior. So look down on other people in other words, because the ego is a filter, right? So it's just a filter through which we're filtering everything. And the goal isn't to kill the ego. Okay. He says the, and I love the way he put it, like the goal is to tame it, right? Make it, make it our servant, not our master. Because when we get feedback from someone, and we say, you don't know what I'm talking, you don't know what you're talking about. You're just an idiot. That's a superior position where we go into superiority, right? Or we can have a

31:30pattern of getting really down on a subject and crushed. I'm never enough. I'm never going to measure up. So we're like, our ego is like down from everyone else. And so the ability, what I hear you saying is that in, it sounds like your culture is one where people are conscious that I did, maybe not by those words, but it sounds like everyone has been able to tame their ego, especially you because if you have a junior designer who's given you a critique of feedback in front of clients, that can feel threatening for a leader, especially if we're going there with the ego or a mask or wanting to appear like we're not something. Totally, totally. Yeah, I like the way you phrase that. And I think that in the moment where a junior designer might have a critique, if that junior designer is a stranger to me, I probably would feel if not defensive skeptical. But if I know that that person has my best interest in mind and is pursuing truth, that person might see something that I don't see. And I might, that might click immediately, might take me a minute to find it. But hopefully as a leader, I want truth

32:35more than the inflated or deflated ego. And I like that model because I think a lot of things in life can become a vice in two directions, just like you described, to high or to low of a depending of ourselves. But what's accurate, right? Let's let's try to get closer to that. And correcting might mean inflating or might mean deflating. And hopefully I have wise and generous people around me to have to tack toward that. I love that. Well, I hope our listeners have gotten a lot of valuable information from this because the nuggets you dropped here about building a team about the hunger and approach of how you built your practice originally with the work, reaching out to other architects. And there's another example too. It sounds like sounds like you've been able to tame your ego or you were somewhere along the line, you're able to succeed despite the ego. Because what I know is that in the consulting work we do with clients, of course, we tell them, reach out, if you're struggling for work, reach out

33:38to architects in your area, let them know what you're up to. Totally, right? Tell them, hey, I would love to contribute to your practice. Maybe have work I could do. Maybe you could send me some work. I want to be your partner. I don't want, you know, can we be collaborative here? And that can feel very, if our ego is inflated or deflated, it can feel very threatening and it can keep us from actually doing that because we're there too good to reach out to the architect. That's where we feel superior or it makes us feel ashamed that we have to reach out to someone else. Yeah, because we don't want to be rejected. Yeah. Yes. Yes. We, just this year, we started the practice of inviting other architects to critique the work on the boards. We just called it an experiment. We didn't know if it was going to be helpful or strange and awkward, but it was some of the best meetings we've ever had where they felt the compliment that we admire their taste. And my team got to hear outside voices. It was so special to see what they queued in on as being

34:39rich with opportunity and what they might have done differently. And I think they also like seeing the sort of content that we don't often publish, which is like the messy half-baked stuff. What does that look like? And so, yeah, I think if we were afraid of them saying no or actually did not look up to their talent, that wouldn't have happened. And the project would therefore not have had that boost. So, hopefully one of the nuggets that our listeners are hearing is just that encouragement to not be isolated, but to reach out to individuals who can be part of that success journey. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anything you would tell yourself knowing what you know now going back to those early years, you could sit down with the other version. I wish I could tell myself to worry less. I think that that's where my, my vice leans is overthinking too much anxiety and worry. And I think that sometimes that's helpful, but most of the time that is unnecessary, unhealthy.

35:40And of course, hindsight's 2020, but to lean into your hypothetical question, I would say, just worry less. Yeah. And you know, it's so how do you do that? Because it's easy to say, oh, just worry less, Anthony. I'm sitting down with you 10 years ago. Don't worry about it. You're like, don't worry about it. I got payroll. You know, we have a little gap in our projects right here. You know, this, this contract to call this with this issue I'm dealing with that strategies, strategies, you know, let's say the younger version of you says, help me out with that Anthony. How do I do that? No, I relate to that critique because it feels like you cannot possibly execute on that conceptual advice. I, one thing that does continue to help me is when I have to, when I'm in the situations that would trigger that cortisol, I benefit from sharing that experience with people I trust and sometimes my, my leaders on my team and trying to put myself in the mindset

36:41of this is actually going to teach me so much. And so short-term pain for long-term pain, gain, meaning we have 30 active projects, three clients we're struggling with, right? I want to be transparent about that. But those projects have taught me so much. And so if my aperture for success is only 2025, I'm going to call that a loss. But if my aperture for success is at least 10 years farther, the feedback I'm getting from these heartbreaking experiences is improving my process, helping me see my own blind spots. And I can genuinely move from a place of fear and concern to this is actually a long-term gift. Like it's not killing me and it is quite literally making my process stronger. So why would I not, why would I not literally celebrate and throw my arms up and say, Hey, team, I've got some good news, right? I just learned something incredible. It's going to feel painful. It does feel painful. But it's that, it's that

37:46partially open conversation, partially just inner monologue that helps me deploy the advice of like, don't worry, find what is the gift or the seed of the advantage in these scary situations. Yeah, yeah, that's very, very profound. Is there any question that I should have asked you if you were sitting on the side of the table? You're a great interviewer. You covered some good stuff. What am I forgetting? We have a lot of good meat ears. I'm really happy with the way the conversation went and I'm super happy with it. Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you. It's good to be on the podcast. Good to have you on your Anthony. I appreciate it. Absolutely. And that's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed the episode today with Anthony Laney. I really enjoyed the opportunity to finally sit down with Anthony. We've known each other for such a long time. And I want to leave you with today's smart practice tool tip. Perhaps you've built a firm that's actually worth something, but you don't want to let it fall apart when you leave. You'd like to carry on your legacy.

38:50Well, here's the thing. Your successors can't lead if you're clinging to control and your vision won't last if it only lives in your head. That's why we've prepared a special guide for you if you're an employee as part of a firm that's going through a transition or a firm owner who is looking to transition your firm in the next five years. Go to businessofarchitecture.com forchlashtransition-ready to download the design firm transition ready guide. Smooth transition, secure legacy and no drama. Also, thank you to those of our recent listeners who left reviews for the podcast on iTunes. I love it. Appreciate it. We'd love to read your name and acknowledge you here on the show. To be acknowledged on the show, open up the podcast app on your iPhone. Search for business of architecture. And after clicking on the show, scroll all the way to the bottom to leave a review. Today's episode of this show is sponsored by smart practice. It's our leading step-by-step solution for architectural practice owners that want to structure their existing practice so the complexity of business doesn't get in the way of

39:52architecture. Because look, everyone has access to free advice, but not everyone gets tailored advice designed around their business, their goals and their blind spots. That's why we've put together a team of experts to help small practice owners like you succeed. So if you're ready to quit being a glorified administrator and get back to architecture again, go to smartpracticemethod.com and discover the proven simple and easy to implement smart practice method that's revolutionizing firm management for owners and teams. And thank you for joining me today. And I want to remind you that the views expressed on this show by my guests do not represent those of the host and we make no representation, promise guarantee pledge warranty contract bond or commitment, except to help you do your best work and get handsomely compensated for it. Carpe Dieb.