Katie [00:00:02]:
Welcome to the AEC Marketing for Principles podcast. This show is designed as a conversation between sales and marketing principals to address trends, challenges and best practices that are driving growth for professional service firms. Through our collection of discussions with subject matter experts, industry legends and leaders, we aim to share thoughts and practical tips with our listeners and that you can use for growing your AEC brands. Hosted by me, Katie Cash, Senior Vice President at smartigies, the AEC growth consulting firm that’s been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 2008.
Katie [00:00:43]:
Hi everyone. We are continuing the season of Making an Impact. And today’s episode is a supercharged look inside what marketing can really do when you are given the chance to align marketing with firm strategy. So my guest today is Katie Robinson. Yes, another Katie. And Katie is the Chief marketing officer at LS3P where she has helped shape how marketing integrates with knowledge management, with research, with project data, all with the goal of better serving the business unit and better serving the business as a whole. And under her leadership, we are proud to say that LS3P has taken a thought leadership approach to their data collection and to their relationship planning and making the most out of every hour that is spent on positioning for the next win. So if you’re sitting back and you’ve ever wondered how to move marketing from a support function to a true strategic partner, this episode is for you and Katie.
Katie [00:01:41]:
I want to say on behalf of all the marketers and our listeners, thank you so much for joining us. I’m really excited for today’s conversation.
Katie Robinson [00:01:48]:
Thank you for having me. What an intro.
Katie [00:01:50]:
You make it very easy. So I want to start with a conversation, Katie, about the strategic role of a modern day AEC marketer. So, you know, I’ve grown up in the industry as you have as well. And when I first started AEC marketing was really all about putting proposals together and it was really about, you know, being reactive and responding to whatever that deadline was. And even though I think all, all marketers across the industry really want to elevate marketing, they want to do, quote, unquote, real marketing. It’s really hard to do that within a technical firm. And so I just want to have an honest conversation about what it takes to drive marketing with intention and how to really elevate marketing to that strategic level. Because you have achieved that.
Katie [00:02:38]:
You are the CMO for a design firm and you’ve been able to kind of go that whole course in your career.
Katie Robinson [00:02:46]:
I have, I have. I will tell you, first of all, ask a lot of Questions and make friends with people outside of marketing so you learn more about the firm as a whole and don’t stay in your marketing bubble. Just to tell you a little bit about marketing at LS3P, you mentioned what we call the responsive efforts, the proposals in interviews. Those are still really, really important. That’s how we make our money. I would say, you know, still about 60, 70% of what marketing does at LS3P is still that responsive effort. But then the rest, we get to really dive into the proactive stuff, really setting the stage, researching clients, helping to drive that strategy. So when those responsive efforts hit the table, hopefully the clients know who LS3P is.
Katie Robinson [00:03:46]:
Before 2020, we really had the typical makeup of an AEC firm. We had marketing in silos in our different offices. We sometimes talked, but not really. We did have a centralized marketing drive where our stuff was stored. And we met maybe once a quarter over conference calls or Zoom. And in 2020 we decided we were going to be a firmwide team. And so at the beginning of 2020 we went to this firm wide model and a lot of our office leadership was very hesitant because that’s my marketing person.
Katie [00:04:25]:
Right? They’re down the hall. They’re my person.
Katie Robinson [00:04:28]:
Yeah, yeah, don’t take my person. And then you fast forward a couple months and what happened in 2020 that everybody still talks about.
Katie [00:04:38]:
We still have PTSD from COVID We do, we do.
Katie Robinson [00:04:41]:
So we had a pandemic. So overnight no one was local and your local market maybe homeschooling their kids or sick themselves or caring for a loved one. So that actually fast forwarded the acceptance of marketing as a firm wide team for us. So it abled us to escalate us going one step further and starting to operate as a creative agency. We were able to kind of shift gears from the typical AEC marketing structure to working like an external creative agency. That allowed us to elevate marketing within LS3P to really focus on public relations and really pushing intentional social media and campaigns to get in front of our clients. And then the strategy behind how we interact with our clients, it really positioned us at that level that is kind of unique for our industry.
Katie [00:05:42]:
So now it’s been a couple years under this new structure. What do you think has been the biggest payoff of adopting that firm wide team support idea?
Katie Robinson [00:05:52]:
Oh, collaboration. Yeah, a million percent. The marketing team is the most amazing group of individuals I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. These professionals are just, they’re so creative, they’re so dedicated and the way that they work with one another to elevate each other, but then also the firm, you see, even proposals are more solid, interviews are more solid, and then all of the proactive materials that we’re able to produce, because we’re working as a team, we’re able to highlight experience across the firm instead of living in that little bubble of just, this is Charleston’s experience, this is Charlotte’s experience. So we’re really able to say, hey, this person over here has allied health experience. Let’s get them into this podcast or proactive marketing booklet that we’re putting together too. So just seeing all of that knowledge come forth and then also we were able to show the firm that even though we’re support team, we’re growing our careers. So it’s just as important for the firm to focus on our advancement because we don’t want to leave the firm.
Katie Robinson [00:07:03]:
We want to be able to advance our careers at LS3 in AEC marketing. So that was probably the biggest benefit of going to a firm wide structure.
Katie [00:07:14]:
I love that and I love a few things that you said, Katie. First, I love that you recognized that marketers are professionals. And, you know, sometimes we have a little bit of a chip on our shoulder and it’s intimidating working for licensed engineers and, you know, registered architects and project management professionals. But we have to recognize that we ourselves are professionals and we know our craft better than anyone else. So I love that you recognize that and you kind of set the stage for that. I also love how you spoke a little bit earlier about, you know, to the marketers listening, make sure you make friends outside of the marketing team so that you understand, you know, how the services that your firm provides fits together, how you, how your business makes money and you know, how, why all those stories matter and you know, what does it really look like in terms of putting out a fire drill for your firm? Because you’re always putting out proposal fire drills, but your project manager is probably doing something. So building those relationships, I think is, is absolutely critical. And I think it’s awesome that you’ve gone to this new model, you’ve broken down the silos, your team’s working together.
Katie [00:08:20]:
I too think AEC marketers have a little bit of a superpower and they are some of the best people in the industry, work really hard, love what they do. And you’re right, like your firm wants to retain them. It’s super expensive to onboard a new marketer, especially someone that might have grown with the firm that knows all the history and doesn’t just know where the files are stored on your marketing drive, but understands, you know, the stories behind them and how to lace those projects together with the resumes. So that’s all really great advice. I want to shift a little bit, Katie, because I’ve heard you also talk on other podcasts and events a little bit about the partnership between marketing and, and this idea of having firm wide knowledge management so you have a one source of information because that is universally. I think one of the biggest pain points between marketers and their internal clients is keeping up with all of the data related to our firm profiles and project sheets and resumes and making sure things stay current, you know, and that’s true for small firms that have a one man marketing team or large firms that have, you know, hundreds or thousands of marketers. That’s always a challenge. So can you talk a little bit about how that program has evolved at LS3P and what that partnership between marketing and knowledge management looks like on a day to day basis?
Katie Robinson [00:09:43]:
By far my two favorite subjects. So you may have to cut me off on this one because I might get a little long winded. At LS3P, marketing and knowledge management both fall under my umbrella, which is about 5 years ago I would have said abnormal for our industry, but it’s actually turning into a little bit more of a normal occurrence. To combine these, I’m going to go back in time a little bit because when I started with LS3P 21 years ago, I was a marketing coordinator. So my main role was doing proposals and interviews and trying to find the project data, trying to find the when was this project completed, what was the square footage, what was the construction cost, all of the things that we really are trying to find. I would sit in the marketing closet on a floor with a three ring binder, flipping through pages of stuff. Because I mean, y’, all, it was a long time ago, flipping through pages, you know, trying to find information and then bugging people for it all the time. So a few years into my time here at LS3P, I knew that we used our, our database for timesheets and expense reports.
Katie Robinson [00:10:53]:
And I knew all of our projects were in there because the accounting department used it for billings. So that’s when I started to ask questions. That’s when I started to sit with our finance leader at the time and ask, how are you using this? There’s a lot of other fields, fields that I need within this platform, but they’re empty. She really started to kind of train me on, on how they were using it and why nobody was using the other fields. So I started working with other business leaders at the time and just saying, what if we could use it? What if we could really lean into these fields? So that was really the onset of our knowledge management program at LS3P and it was really self serving, to be quite honest, because I just needed a place to put the data. So then it kind of snowballed from there to, okay, project managers are really busy. We made a little bit of progress of getting this data, but we were asking the busiest people in the firm to put it in. So that’s when we decided, let’s take a step back and try to work with a different group.
Katie Robinson [00:11:59]:
We went and it was our emerging professionals, so not quite licensed individuals. And we asked them, you’re working on the projects anyway, can you put the data in? And that was the beginning of what we call our data manager program. So now every single project as a active participant on the project and their role on the project. So it’s not a full time position, but their role on the project is data manager. So throughout the life of the project they collect the data for the project, working hand in hand with the project manager. So it was really cool because it’s kind of unintentional mentorship because they get to work hand in hand with the project manager on it. And we went from having maybe 10% of project data in there to about 90 to 95% of project data, which is huge.
Katie [00:12:52]:
Hi everyone. It is almost that time of year again. It is almost time for Smartwin. If you’ve been around smarter GS and the podcast for a while, you know that every February the Smarter G’s team brings together the best and the brightest from across the AEC industry to our conference called Smartwin. And 2026 is shaping up to be a great year. We will host it again in Atlanta in person in February. Smartwin26 is called AEC Changemakers and we are presenting this with our partners at PSMJ and co hosting it this year at Georgia Tech’s School of Building Construction. This is really where AEC leaders go to share what’s working, challenging what’s not working, and uncover new ways to win.
Katie [00:13:39]:
I hope you will join us. Make sure you snag your seats before they sell out. We do sell out every year, so head on over to smartergies.com smartwin where you can learn more about the agenda, who’s going to be speaking, you can see more information about our sponsors and of course you can reserve your seats. One special thing to note about Smartwin 2026 is we are limiting attendance to no more than two people per firm. This way we can have more firms participate in our event. We hope to see you there in February. Yeah, I feel like you should get a Nobel for that. Like the amount of frict that you have reduced by just recognizing, hey, we’re all one team.
Katie [00:14:25]:
There are a million different departments that this project is going to touch. Someone needs to own data management so that we don’t have everything living separate in all of our places. So simple but very, very impactful.
Katie Robinson [00:14:41]:
Yes. And honestly I, I would like to say it was hard to get started. It really was not that hard. And I think a lot of firms are so overwhelmed by the thought of this. Take one office, take one market and just try it. Take five data points and, and just try it. And this also goes back to the, you know, gather your friends outside of your world, outside of marketing because this data is needed for professional liability insurance applications. It’s needed for being able to analyze your projects from a financial aspect.
Katie Robinson [00:15:22]:
It’s needed for project managers to be able to say yes, this type of project is successful for us. We want to chase more of this work. So it’s far beyond marketing. But again back to the self serving. It really helps my team well.
Katie [00:15:38]:
And I know you know, at Smarter G’s we work with a lot of different firms as consultants and this is a universal challenge. And just about every firm we work with, Katie, like they have some system they’ve invested in and a lot of times it is financially driven but they’re not using all the fields and they’re, you know, they’re paying for it. It’s an out of box solution. They’ve got all these opportunities but they haven’t unlocked universal access to it. There’s nobody champion the effort or someone in this other department bought something else and they don’t talk to one another. So now you’ve got duplication of effort plus you’ve, you know, you’re trying to manage well which information is correct and if they could just start, I think like you said, start small, pilot an office pilot, a division pilot, you know, one project management team or something like that and just start working towards it, build some systems efficiency, some accountability, then they can roll it out and it, it is really information that the entire firm can use and have something to point back to and be really excited about. You mentioned start with five data points. Do you have suggestions on what those five should be.
Katie Robinson [00:16:47]:
Sure. I mean again, if you think about proposals, you think about the most commonly asked things. You have to show, you know, the five examples of projects for experience and construction. Completion date, construction cost, square footage. So three right off the bat, really easy ones. Reference. You know, a lot of times we forget we really need to track a reference name for contact information. And then we kind of have to track that person too if they leave and go somewhere else, which is a whole nother, whole nother thing.
Katie Robinson [00:17:25]:
We can talk about CRM kind of data points like that. And it’s really specific to your firm as well because we have a field that we kind of developed called Project Height and that’s our primary SF330 code. Just to drop some, you know, acronyms for you. Because we do a lot of those forms.
Katie [00:17:42]:
Yeah.
Katie Robinson [00:17:42]:
And it’s pretty painful. And we wanted to make sure that that was collected for every single project.
Katie [00:17:47]:
Okay. What advice do you have for firms that might be multidiscipline in nature and the out of the box solution? They have to pick a primary service or something but it doesn’t take into account. Well they also did these other things or maybe it’s a transportation job. But there was a bridge associated with how do you handle all of those one off little nuances in the system where you can’t make a data field for everything. But how do you manage that?
Katie Robinson [00:18:18]:
A lot of the systems are actually set up to handle the multi disciplines already. And a lot of times you have to do it through grids. You have to be patient. It is a lot more difficult to do it that way. The main thing is meet in advance.
Katie [00:18:35]:
Okay.
Katie Robinson [00:18:36]:
It all of this key stakeholders in a room and talk it through. You know, nowadays you can record a meeting and you can lean on AI to help you kind of disseminate the information.
Katie [00:18:48]:
I’ve got a note taker here.
Katie Robinson [00:18:50]:
Yeah, we did that. We just sat around a table and talked. Make sure that everybody has a voice and think about what all do we truly want to collect. But more importantly, why do we want to collect it? And if there’s no why don’t collect it? Because you’re going to ask people to collect information you’re never going to use. So that’s really important is just find out what you want to collect, how are you going to use it and then how are you going to explain to the individuals who are going to collect it why you’re asking them to do it?
Katie [00:19:24]:
Okay. And I have to imagine those data records really do Grow over the course of a project, you know, when it’s first getting put in scope, you know, a little bit of things. But it’s going to grow, right? It’s going to have take on its own legs and own personality. And that’s where your data manager role I think is probably critical at capturing all that information. So you mentioned. Yeah, you want initial contract value, final contract value. What happened between the two? Right. Well, that’s where that data manager comes in and can give you the story behind just the fields.
Katie Robinson [00:19:58]:
Absolutely.
Katie [00:20:00]:
So LS3P is not a small firm. Talk to us a little bit about who has access to all of this information and how do you decide who gets access and what advice do you have for those listening that are fighting? Well, marketing doesn’t need that, accounting needs that. Our project doesn’t need that. You know, marketing needs that. How do you, how do you vet that?
Katie Robinson [00:20:22]:
We are just above 500 team members and we have 12 office locations and our offices are in the Southeast. We also are in about nine different markets. So we do pretty much all forms of architecture and interiors except for single family. And the reason I outline that is that kind of increases the amount of data that and it also, it, it changes the complexity of marketing because your client base is very different. We have to know how to market to, you know, a K12 client and then a private developer. Much different language that you use. But from a data standpoint, I would say the main message is no one owns the database, no one group owns it. And that’s what I hear so often.
Katie Robinson [00:21:17]:
Well, we don’t have access to it because it owns the database or accounting owns the database. Knowledge management in your firm is never going to be successful if one group owns the database. It has to be a collaborative effort. Now there is an asterisk next to that. One group does have to own the security settings of the database at LS3P. That’s a collaboration between the technology team and the knowledge management team just to make sure that the correct security is in place. We are very, very fortunate at LS3P that we made the decision that we were really going to invest in our database system. Every single team member has full access to every project record.
Katie Robinson [00:22:06]:
Again, there’s an asterisk. They may not see the financial information behind the project, but they can see the primary data behind the project. However, we do field based security. So only those primary individuals on the project team can ed the project record. So that’s how we kind of control, you know, who can see and access What? And then we put some other security levels in place. For example, our. Our finance team are the only ones that can put in new clients because we want to make sure that no one messes up those records. That’s kind of important.
Katie Robinson [00:22:43]:
So we do have levels of security in place, but the primary data, everybody in the firm has access to, and we also do a lot of exporting and we build power BI reports that again, every team member has access to at certain levels, so they can kind of bypass the ugly database reports and have really nice data visualizations to take a look at.
Katie [00:23:12]:
We are visual creatures. We appreciate. Okay, Katie, I want to pivot just a little bit. You and I both talked about growing up in the industry and, you know, I got a visual of you sitting in the middle of your production room floor flipping through binders. I have done similar things, but the idea of capturing information for marketing purposes has taken lots of forms. And here we sit today and there’s lots of new tools available. You know, we’ve got AI that can scan meeting minutes and help you create a blog post. You can use AI to help you, you know, repurpose an interview pitch and maybe use it for a webinar.
Katie [00:23:50]:
There’s lots of different ways that we can harvest content using technology and just thinking a little bit beyond the deadline. And I know that you all have done some pretty fun things where in the spirit of knowledge sharing or building some internal relationships that just happen to snowball into other areas. Can you share a little bit about maybe your Expert hours programs and some other things that you’ve done to kind of help shape internal knowledge sharing and building up that. That mindset? Of course.
Katie Robinson [00:24:24]:
Of course. I love these examples because this is a really great example of the partnership between the marketing team and the knowledge management team. We started Expert Hours. We’ve done Expert Hours for years at LS3P, but we really leaned into it this year of being really intentional. So the marketing team scheduled these expert hours and we decided to record them. They were open to anybody in the firm to attend. We had certain questions we wanted to ask the experts, but then people could submit questions. Maybe there was a topic that we wanted them to talk about that was their area of expertise, or maybe they had something that they wanted us to ask about and they were hour long, really easy lift.
Katie Robinson [00:25:13]:
Normally it was a 10, 15 minute conversation with the expert ahead of time, just saying, hey, anything you want us to ask or anything you don’t want us to ask in this? And then we had it on teams and we hit record and we had just a really casual conversation with them. There’s no slides, there’s no presentation. It’s just a conversation. And within the first couple of experts hours, we found that they truly turned into conversations. It was really cool. Different people would ask questions, they would raise their virtual hand and just unmute and ask questions, or they would just chat them in. And they went in every different direction, which was really great, from really technical questions to how did you get started in architecture or interiors or, you know, how do I find a mentor? It was just really great to see how they just took on a life of their own. And then we took the transcripts from those.
Katie Robinson [00:26:15]:
Well, first we put the recording on our intranet, so if anybody missed it, they can see the entire expert hour. But marketing took the transcripts and we leaned into AI. So we do have the pro licenses of copilot. We’re very fortunate that our technology team invested in those for us. And we asked every single question we could think of. We asked things like what research topics could come from this transcript? What conferences would this expert be a good presenter at based on this transcript? What proactive marketing materials could we develop? What podcasts could they be a guest on? What internal resources could be developed? So we had a list of prompts that we could just put into Copilot that we wanted to do on every single expert hour. And then depending on what we heard for the conversation, there could be others. Some of the experts like to cite things that they subscribe to to stay in the latest trends.
Katie Robinson [00:27:21]:
So we would ask that. And it is amazing what comes out of it. With the conferences. Sometimes you get a list of all conferences, the dates and how to register as a speaker. So really detailed information coming out of it. And then we lean into the information knowing that it is generated by AI. So we have the saying that my marketing team has probably heard me say more times than they care to listen to. It’s trust but verify.
Katie [00:27:54]:
Oh, yeah.
Katie Robinson [00:27:55]:
Yes. Never print anything that AI generates. But it’s amazing that all of the content and all of the different ways that you can use one simple hour long conversation. So it’s been a lot of fun. And we’re looking at other ways to do this. You know, can we take things where maybe people struggle, Maybe people are trying to write a cover letter for this really important proposal and they just can’t get out of their head. They know what they want to say to the client, but they just. Just don’t know how to put it on paper.
Katie Robinson [00:28:27]:
Call them Hit record, you know, on, on teams and say, just talk to me like I’m the client. Yeah. And then let AI do its work and send it to them and say, these are your words. This is what you said. It’s a great starting point for you. So just really leaning into the technology that, you know, you and I didn’t have when we first started. So it’s, it’s really amazing.
Katie [00:28:50]:
It’s like a little cheat code, but I love that. So sitting here thinking about, I have a ton of clients that today they do like project of the week and, you know, Friday mornings around breakfast in the, in the break rooms, they’re talking about whatever the project of the week was. They could record that and harvest it in so many different ways. There’s other clients that do like the lesson of the week or the lesson of the month that’s more about their customer service approach and project management efficiencies and things like that. Same thing.
Katie Robinson [00:29:22]:
Or.
Katie [00:29:23]:
We just met with a client out of Miami last week and we learned that they do a lot of presentations in person and all of their presenters like to prep. And we’re like, hey, make sure you do a final dress rehearsal and record it. And let’s make sure that we have that. And it can live, you know, internally as a knowledge base piece, but also so that we could harvest all of that. And it’s things that are already happening and just layering in the idea of, hey, let’s record it, have a record of it so that we can find different ways to think about what you said, apply those ideas, and kind of fill the marketing editorial as we move forward. And some of it, at least in my experience, has been pretty creative. Other things that seem pretty obvious, and you’re like, yeah, okay, you know, we’re going to submit it for an award. We said we were going to do that.
Katie [00:30:13]:
That’s not adding value. But let’s talk about some other things. You talked a little bit about how you’re working AI into marketing, workflow. Any, any other ways that you all are using AI throughout the practice that you want to speak to.
Katie Robinson [00:30:28]:
We have an AI steering committee. And so we decided that we, we were going to be proactive on this as a firm. And so we have a great technology team, as I mentioned, and we’re also very cyber security conscious and we want to make sure that our, our data is protected, we want to make sure our intellectual property is protected. So we do a lot of researching. As someone raises their hand and said, I found this new AI application And I think that we should test it. There’s a form that they could submit, and then we have a team of individuals who take a look at it from a security standpoint, look at it from several other standpoints that they look at, and then we test it. Maybe it’s a small group of people, maybe it’s just one person that tests it. And if it has legs and if it’s making us more efficient, if it’s not just noise, and if we don’t have another program already vetted that does the same thing at the same level, then it may become one of our approved AI sources.
Katie Robinson [00:31:32]:
And if it’s not approved, we don’t use it. So we do have a very clear list of approved AI applications that we have. And we also have the ability to submit a use case. You know, maybe there’s not an AI out there. Then maybe there’s something we can generate on our own. We a lot of data that a lot of people want to tap into. And can we combine that with some, you know, big data sources? And so we’re kind of in that fun stage right now of what if, what, what can we do on our own, too.
Katie [00:32:05]:
Katie, I don’t know if you do this at LS3P, if you’ve seen it with some of your other partners. I know sometimes you do design, build, and other partnership opportunities. But remember when, like, Revit was new and that was, you know, really how you touted being innovative and different? I’m seeing firms get pretty creative with that angle on how they’re using AI tools and how they’re harvesting information for decision making or scenario building. And it is kind of interesting because you’re sitting here going, we’re an architecture firm, we’re a construction firm. Why are we talking all about that? But it really is applicable to this new frontier that we’re in.
Katie Robinson [00:32:45]:
It is. And what I love about LS3P is we’re not looking at AI to take over the creative process. Right? Looking at it to enhance it. It’s not going to take over what our architects and interiors bring to the table. They are immensely talented individuals. And the way that they can speak to the clients and bring their projects to life, it’s not going to be replaced. But the way that they can lean into some of these applications, it helps to kind of just put an exclamation point on what they’re doing. And I think that’s the beauty in it.
Katie Robinson [00:33:24]:
And if we can automate some of the kind of mundane things that we do so we can spend more time on elevating that design then. Why not?
Katie [00:33:33]:
Well, and I think that’s what a lot of people have shared is it’s not so much that these AI tools have replaced people, but it has replaced a lot of the more administrative, redundant, you know, task oriented parts of the job. And it’s freed up their time to think more deeply and to have, you know, more thoughtful conversations, more thoughtful touch points with their project team members and with their clients and finding that to be a little bit more fulfilling too, as a professional. Before we leave the conversation, Katie, I want to talk a little bit about. We keep going back to the beginning. You know, a lot of AEC firms, marketers are often tasked with outputs. You know, hey, I need a proposal, I need a social post, I need a deck for this presentation, I need.
Katie Robinson [00:34:19]:
A trade show booth.
Katie [00:34:21]:
But we’re really here to advocate for the elevation of marketers. So you started as a coordinator, you’re now a cmo. I get to act as a fractional cmo, as a consultant. But from your perspective, what do you think it takes to earn a seat at the table to work with those technical professionals on firm wide strategy, on project positioning, on, you know, client relationship management? What should the next wave of marketers be shooting for in their professional development?
Katie Robinson [00:34:53]:
I’m going to sound like a little bit of a broken record here, but find friends outside of marketing. The way that I have been able to developed my career at LS3P is because I went outside of the typical marketing space. I spent time with finance, I spent time with the practice team members, I spent time with the technology team, with the CEO, with the chairman. I wanted to learn about how the firm operated. I wanted to learn about our strategic planning process and why did we do strategic planning. And you know, because you think about, especially in architecture, interiors, interiors, firm, we’re, we’re visual, you know, why are we doing a strategic plan but we’re also a business. And so learning all of those different aspects of what it takes to truly make a firm successful, that’s what allowed me to not only elevate myself but to be able to build this marketing team that I think is a world class marketing team within LS3P and to make sure that their voices are also strategic voices within the firm that it’s not just task based of here I need an ad, I need this proposal. It’s the.
Katie Robinson [00:36:21]:
What do you think about this strategy of capturing this client base? What do you think about this strategy of entering this market? They’re sought after for that level of strategy as well as the production that they could do in addition to that. So I would say it’s that and I hate to have such a simplistic answer to it, but it truly is that simple. You just have to go beyond your boundaries and beyond the walls of the marketing department and be willing to ask and learn and put in the, the extra effort.
Katie [00:36:58]:
Yeah, I, I think that’s great advice. It’s advice that was given to me 20 years ago that really helped me. I still, you know, teams that I’m mentoring, I tell them the same thing and you know, they’ll sit there and like, what do you mean? I’m like, okay, well you work when this one office, you’re doing the same proposals over and over again. What resumes are you using? Go ask them to lunch, ask them for a cup of coffee, go see if they’ll do a page turn review and just ask them all the questions that you have. And then the other thing that was told to me really early on, and I don’t think marketers realize they are at the table before they know it because they are the ones producing a lot of this story. So you know where the firm is going, you know what you’re chasing, you know some of that. And if you just take a minute to read and reflect on what you’re putting together, it’s different when you have a chance to read it and you’re not just checking for QA qc, but when you have a chance to read and absorb and you start to realize, hey, you know, like, the last four proposals I’ve been doing have been for this type of work. What’s that about? And then you can have, you know, maybe a higher conversation with the project executive or whoever’s over that group and get a little bit insight into that strategy.
Katie [00:38:16]:
I would always invest in those with a curious mindset that wanted to learn more because I think we would both get things out of it if they didn’t understand things. And I wasn’t doing a good job as, as a manager or a leader of saying where we were going from a visioning standpoint. And then when I was young and would ask all the questions, I was just a sponge trying to learn, well, what’s the difference between design bid build and design build? And what in the world Is this P3 thing? So I think that’s great advice. Just don’t ever eat alone and always come with questions.
Katie Robinson [00:38:49]:
That’s right. And you know, it goes for your entire listener base. It’s it’s the individuals building their career and then it’s the individuals maybe at the top of their career because it’s a shared responsibility. You know, if there is a strategic plan and if it’s held only at the top leadership level and you’re not sharing all of the initiatives and strategies in the plan where the people building their careers could say, I can see myself in that, I can see how I can make an impact in that, then you’re really doing yourself a disservice. So it’s kind of a balance between both levels.
Katie [00:39:25]:
And I love how you are really taking a stance on bringing the knowledge team together with the marketing and the strategy. Katie, this has been such a thoughtful conversation. I really appreciate you connecting all those dots for our listeners and I love you know that you you share our love for the fellow AEC marketers. Thank you for joining me today on AEC Marketing for Principles. If our listeners would like to connect with you or learn more about what your Great firm at LS3P is doing, what is the best way for them to reach out and to follow you.
Katie Robinson [00:39:59]:
All, you can go to ls3p.com all of our social is linked to our website. And then if you would like to connect with me directly, you can look me up on LinkedIn.
Katie [00:40:09]:
And that is Katie Robinson. Katie, thank you so much. And for all the listeners, thank you for tuning in to the Bitter End. And until next time, keep finding ways to make that impact one piece at a time.
Katie [00:40:23]:
AEC Marketing for Principles is presented by smartigies, the AEC growth consulting firm that has been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 2008. The show is hosted by me, Katie Cash, Senior VP at smartigees.
Katie [00:40:39]:
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Katie [00:40:58]:
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Thanks for listening.