Katie [00:00:02]:
Welcome to the AEC Marketing for Principles podcast. This show is designed as a conversation between sales and marketing principles 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 that you can use for growing your AEC brands. Hosted by me, Katie Cash, senior vice president at SmartEgies, the AEC growth consulting firm that’s been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 2008. Hi, everyone. Katie Cash here. Thanks for joining us today for AEC Marketing for Principles. Today, I am joined by a fellow consultant in this space, Stu Haney, who, Stu, I’m so glad we’re getting to catch up today because you and I go back a couple years now where we worked together when you were a client of Smartergies, and now we get to work together in fractional consulting roles.
Katie [00:01:05]:
So it’s really exciting to reconnect with individuals from your network that you don’t get to see every day and and interface every day. So I’m so excited to be having today’s conversation. And for those of you that don’t know Stu, you should check him out. But before I just talk all about you, why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit about your background and how you got into the design and construction space and maybe how you used to spend your time during your day job before you decided to become a consultant?
Stu [00:01:33]:
Sounds good, Katie. Thanks. Yeah. It is really cool to get to chat with you in this capacity after having had the opportunity and pleasure of working with you sort of as one of your clients. So briefly my background, I’m an engineer by training, although I don’t always admit that at parties, electrical engineering specifically. And I came up through the design ranks, worked in pretty much every market you can think of, except for residential. So all the bigger scale markets and just had a really great career, a lot of good fortune in terms of my own personal growth and to get to see a lot in the business. I was interested early in project management and became a certified project management professional.
Stu [00:02:26]:
That also had a lean towards general leadership and organizational theory that goes back to college days and some electives. And so I’ve had the chance in my career to kind of lead project teams, to lead resource teams, to lead offices, to do a startup, new groups and new offices. And then ultimately in my last stop, if you will, I ran through the operations manager, chief operations officer, and ultimately the chief executive officer and president of a 300 person, $100,000,000 revenue, national AE and Centimeters firms. So we had architecture, engineering, pretty much everything you can think of engineering wise and construction management. It’s been a a great ride. I did about 2 years ago now after 10 years as a CEO. That was a kind of my preset limit, if you will. 10 years in that heavy job was good.
Katie [00:03:29]:
Yeah. You you got more years under you than a lot of CEOs. Some of them burn out that 5 to 8 year mark. So I think you should be pretty proud of that stent.
Stu [00:03:36]:
Yeah. I am. I’m very happy with it, especially setting it myself and I’m living to it because it’s a heavy job, as I said. But it’s also a job that you can really attach your personal identity to. And it can be a challenge to transition that if you’re not careful. By no means is I already retired, so that was why after some soul searching and what do I wanna do next, I decided to start my own consulting company really trying to help other small businesses and small business leaders navigate the challenges that I navigated in the past 20 to 30 years.
Katie [00:04:14]:
I think we like to say in the consulting world, we we know a thing or 2 because we’ve seen a thing or 2 and learn from our mistakes, friends. Let us help you avoid some of those icebergs. So you started AEC ops, and you’ve been able to grow a a rather nice listing of clientele. And that’s really why we wanted to start having conversations with you this season, Stu, on the show is we’re in season 6 of the podcast, and each year we adopt a theme to help provide some framework around our conversations. And this theme is really all about making an impact. And when I think about that, there’s different ways that we go about making an impact. You’ve got leaders that make an impact on their organizations. You certainly spoke to some of that already.
Katie [00:04:58]:
You’ve got projects that make an impact on the communities in which we work in. But then there’s also business strategies and philosophies that make a really a growing impact on the organizations that a lot of us are employed by. And I think you and your team at AEC ops are onto something with this idea of being a fractional consultant, helping firms with strategic planning, with operational planning. And I think you guys are really leading the way with this boss method. And I thought maybe we could spend some time today, and maybe you could share some of the theory behind your boss method and how it’s being applied in professional services, and maybe why it’s more applicable to professional services in today’s competitive market than it has been in years past.
Stu [00:05:43]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I think about why this became such a focus of mine, and I am a little bit of a mad scientist when it comes to business and operations. But
Katie [00:05:53]:
I think all engineers are that too, right, in your nature to tinker and have that curious mindset and wanting to optimize things. But
Stu [00:06:01]:
Yeah. Absolutely. But in my early days, I was fortunate to be invited into strategic planning efforts and with companies, and I was young enough to be in a position to observe what works and what didn’t work. And I saw all too often this kind of investment in creating a plan that lacked an investment in making it happen. And I always say it’s nails on a chalkboard for me to see a strategic plan. It used to be on a shelf. Today, it would be, like, in a network folder somewhere.
Katie [00:06:34]:
Right. Yeah. I cringe at the thought too at how many hours firms spend year over year putting together their marketing plan, and it just sits there. I’m like, it’s not just an exercise to check off. Like, it there’s real thought behind this. There’s real energy infused in it.
Stu [00:06:51]:
Absolutely. And so where BOSS comes in, if you will, is integrates strategy and operations. It makes strategy, if you will, kind of the centerpiece of the platform that you operate off of. And it is fairly simple, not necessarily easy, but fairly simple in terms of the elements that are in a good operating system. And people process tools. If you go all the way back to Deming, he says that’s how work gets done. And the boss system is very much about people process and tools around your strategy. And then discipline comes into play.
Stu [00:07:33]:
And and I do think having a system and a language associated with it that is straightforward and you can articulate it helps you keep the discipline that’s necessary to drive forward a strategy.
Katie [00:07:52]:
Yeah. I think having a strategy and then having the discipline to follow through with it, the accountability there to follow through on it actually makes it happen. That’s what I enjoyed when I get your newsletters and get the blog posts that you publish. And you had one that was really black and white right in your face about how accountability isn’t always easy because we’ve got all these distractions today, and clients need work done, and it’s easier just to work on the projects and work on the business. But when you use your method, being able to take these strategies, break it down into, say I can’t remember if you were talking about monthly goals into weekly goals. And then these itemized tasks, it does give you a framework of accountability of knowing how to tackle these really big things that sometimes you can’t even wrap your hands around and making it really easy for you to know what you need to focus on right now that’s gonna move the needle down the road. And everybody can really rally around it and see how their impact is making change.
Stu [00:08:52]:
Yeah. You’re spot on. And not only identifying what to focus on, and sometimes it’s just as powerful to identify what was an issue, but to actually acknowledge it as not the top priority and let it sit on the side as opposed to talking about it in every meeting that you have, which is what most of us do. Yeah. I think even when you think about that accountability aspect, the people, the enhanced organizational chart portion of the operating system, addresses that. And I lived this firsthand. I had divisions, if you will, in my company when I was CEO and the architectural division and the engineering division. And the leaders of these areas, they struggle with what a lot of us struggle with, and that is having the courage to set up a structure and put people in charge.
Stu [00:09:45]:
And for example, my architectural practice leader had put together an org chart that was actually circular. And I would challenge anyone to look at that org chart and figure out who is responsible for what and who reported to who. And I get it because if I put this person over that person, their ego is gonna get impacted, and I don’t wanna have that hard conversation. Having those hard conversations and getting clarity about who owns what is exactly what you have to do to run a good organization.
Katie [00:10:17]:
There’s a surprisingly, a large amount of people, I think, in our space that are conflict avoiders and a lot of leaders that run their organizations in this mindset of parity where everybody gets the same budget, everybody gets the same attention. And in reality, you’ve got a market leader, a certain division, or a studio that’s beating your whole firm. You’ve got some rock stars. You’ve got some dead woods on your team. And if you’re in that leadership position, you’ve got to have the courage to see through that and to determine the best way forward. And I could see how sometimes it’s easier to outsource that to someone like you, Stu, to come in with a new perspective, fresh perspective, not a lot of emotional connection to it, and be able to help people facilitate some of those hard discussions and feelings.
Stu [00:11:11]:
Yeah. You’re so right. I mean, typical focus day where we’re putting the operating system in place, that’s one of the things we do is we build that organizational chart. And there’s no two ways about it having a 3rd party, objective 3rd party, help you build it so that it’s not for partners arguing over who gets which chair, and worrying about each other’s feelings. I’m not sure you could do it without that facilitation very effectively. So you’re spot on.
Katie [00:11:41]:
Sometimes we’ve gotta take our egos and our personalities aside and try to think about what’s best for the business and realizing that sometimes what’s best for the business isn’t for the same person to carry the whole load or do something same like that.
Stu [00:11:56]:
Do what they did before. Right? I’ve always done this. Well, maybe you weren’t a great match for that.
Katie [00:12:01]:
Well and it’s so in the world of marketing, kinda parallel to that, we’re having conversations daily with internal teams that are different today. So we’ve got some of these rainmaker models at these great firms that have, you know, tremendous relationships, great reputation, lots and lots of people that are relying on this rainmaker to sell the work, to to feed the firms. Well, that rainmaker’s getting ready to retire, and the groups underneath them don’t make relationships the same way. Right? They you wanna try to get them to go spend a weekend at a dub shoot with strangers? Like, people really win business that way? Like, these are facilitated conversations where we’re trying to groom a new generation of more seller doers than the rainmaker model these days, and there’s a big adversion to that. And I think part of it is just you’re asking that group to tack on more stuff to do when they’re already busy. And the natural tendency of us not wanting to spend extra time outside of the work hours doing extracurriculars and network traditional ways and people not even wanting to get on social media and trying to do networking that way because they’re getting bombarded by recruiters, there’s some real challenges there.
Stu [00:13:20]:
There sure are. And there’s still an element of people wanting to work with people. If I look at my business, there’s a lot of trust involved in hiring a consultant.
Katie [00:13:31]:
Yeah. There’s a lot of vulnerability of sharing the challenges. And I think a lot of folks that you work with, we work with those leaders too, and the hardest part is for them to admit, hey. I’ve built this great business up till this point. I can’t take it any further.
Stu [00:13:48]:
Yeah. Which is often the exact catalyst for implementing an operating business, operating a strategy system is that I’ve hit a ceiling and I’m in pain. And everything that I did that worked before isn’t working going forward. That’s very commonly the situation that triggers somebody to say, I’ve got to do something different here.
Katie [00:14:08]:
Yeah.
Stu [00:14:09]:
Hey, before I forget too, I wanted to go back to, you mentioned about the kind of spreading the peanut butter evenly to everybody. That’s one of the things you helped us with when we brought you in was we had a very diverse company and we grew up in that mode of sharing equally, not investing strategically around the high growth and high return markets and was definitely very important for us to have you show us where we could get a bigger return. And we actually saw it happen before I stepped back as an out of the CEO job. We had, using account based marketing, really invested a little bit more in some growth markets and saw pretty significant return from that.
Katie [00:14:52]:
It’s so funny. We have those conversations daily. I just had a conversation yesterday with a 70 plus year old multidisciplinary firm who’s always operate. Every office, every division, this is what you get. And we’re like, okay. Well, this year, we’d like for you to do something different. We really want you to invest in this market. And this market is getting a lot of funding behind it.
Katie [00:15:13]:
There’s high demand. It feeds your entire business. Yes. Be opportunistic to everything over here that your team wants to work on. That’s great, but we’re not gonna put marketing dollars behind that. But say, answer the phone when they call. Respond to those RFPs. Great.
Katie [00:15:29]:
But in terms of growing and scaling your business and investing your time and building relationships, do that over here. And sometimes it just takes having that very direct conversation of I hear you. I know you wanna do everything. But is your goal still this? Are you still wanting to get yes. Okay. You wanna get here, you’re gonna have to do $25,000,000 jobs, or you could just win one over here from the best. So it’s funny. I mentioning going back to something you said earlier, I know part of your boss method is sitting through and identifying issues and not shying away from them.
Katie [00:16:05]:
And you also mentioned earlier, hey. Let’s just not sit here and just keep talking about the same thing over and over and over again week after week when we come together in our management meetings, but let’s really put a framework in place to help us creatively brainstorm, put together a working solution, and start having that system of accountability of working the solution. I’m curious to how much of those issue conversations that you’re having today, how much of them surround the topics of recruitment and retention of I’ve got more work than I have people to do.
Stu [00:16:38]:
Well, quite a few. And just to step back a little bit, if you think about the operating side of boss, it’s people, it’s process, it’s the cadence of the business, it’s the key metrics you’re gonna use, it’s finance, pricing, and budget, and then issues is a standalone piece of it, and processing issues in a prioritized constructive way. That’s the nuance difference because everyone has issues. But if you want to get into top issues, certainly for the past couple of years, recruiting is repeatedly on there and and retention. And there isn’t a silver bullet for those things. When you thoroughly process the issue, I will say you recognize that there isn’t a silver bullet. You recognize what’s in your control to do about it and you take action on those things that are within your control. And a lot of the stress that exists around recruiting and retention and the supply and demand imbalance that exists there does diminish.
Stu [00:17:41]:
Because you’ve acknowledged what’s in your control and you’re doing those things. You no longer feel a victim in it. And, that proves to be powerful. And, amazingly, there’s some kind of indirect things in running a good operation that improve your ability to recruit and retain.
Katie [00:18:01]:
Oh, I would think that it would certainly improve retention, and then, therefore, you’ve got happy employees that become the ambassadors and aid in recruiting and finding the right kind of folks.
Stu [00:18:12]:
When a young person looks up in the organization and they see dysfunction versus function, and then they lose confidence, and it makes them open to alternatives.
Katie [00:18:23]:
So I’m gonna use the p word with you, the poaching word. I read a handful of your blog articles about respectful recruiting and really not shying away from trying to recruit individuals that have the right expertise that you feel like would be in the right seat, on the right spot in your organization. Can you maybe talk a little bit about that and maybe what are some conversations that our listeners can have with their teams to get comfortable with the idea of there’s not a whole lot of passive candidates out there right now looking. You’re gonna have to go for it. If you find someone you’re working with that’s got the talent you want, have a conversation.
Stu [00:19:03]:
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. And maybe I’m abnormal or unusual in my philosophy here. I’ve always hated the term poaching. I think it maybe applies if you’re just throwing money at people to take them from other firms and other situations. But if you were and my view has always been like a as a leader in a company, when it came to the team, my view was always that everyone works here because it’s in their best interest to work here. And the minute it’s not in their best interest to work here, they ought to be considering their alternatives. And it’s our job to create an environment that makes it the best place for them to work.
Stu [00:19:45]:
Whether that’s career development, whether that’s a well run company where they feel like their efforts are helping the company win, then those are our obligations to have a place that’s going to have lower turnover. So I’ve always had that mindset that people are working here. It’s a free market, employment at will, and people are working here because it’s in their best interests. And that cuts both ways. So if I come across a candidate and we have an opportunity that’s actually better for them than the one they have, why would I not present that to them? And let them exercise their free will in choosing where the best opportunity for them lies. And when you have that mindset, at least I never felt at all uncomfortable sharing opportunities because if they weren’t a better fit, then they wouldn’t take them.
Katie [00:20:37]:
Yeah. Okay. Maybe what I think might be helpful for some of our listeners this has been great conversations too. But for some of our listeners that may not really understand the impact that adopting your business operating and strategy system, the BOSS system. I don’t know if people are catching on that that’s an acronym. We’re AEC. We love a good acronym.
Stu [00:21:00]:
Yes.
Katie [00:21:01]:
What are some of those key components that these firm leaders should be considering to determine whether or not this might be right for them? We talked a little bit. Hey. They’re gonna hit this point where they’re gonna be super frustrated. What are some of those telltale signs that it’s time to have a conversation about getting our operations and and strategy in check?
Stu [00:21:22]:
Yeah. There are a number of them. Certainly, the sense that you’re on a hamster wheel, you’re actually running as fast as you could possibly run. You can’t keep up with what you’ve got, and you’re no longer able to or feel confident that your decisions and actions are taking the company forward. You’re having essentially retention issues where the satisfaction of your staff isn’t where it used to be or should be. Those are common pain points for a company that’s hit the ceiling. Growth stopped. They’ve hit a plateau.
Stu [00:21:58]:
There’s some common plateaus in our business. 20, 50, a 100, a 150 people. Those are common plateaus. And the reason they’re common is because of the behaviors and the organizational structure that you brought from 0 to 20 no longer work 20 to 50.
Katie [00:22:15]:
And I think it’s really more about the staff sizing than the project sizes is what I hear from a lot of folks because
Stu [00:22:22]:
Absolutely. Yeah. Because it’s just the way you organize and control and effectively apply your resources is different when you hit those thresholds than it was before in the projects. You could take a 10 person team and do some pretty big project work very much so that would rival what 200, 300 person firm could do. Our biggest projects, talking about half a $1,000,000,000 in construction, were typically a 10 or 12 person team working on it. And so you could do that in a whether you could win that project’s another matter, but you could do that project in a small firm, but you can’t run a growing firm the same way you ran a small one. Just some things have to change.
Katie [00:23:09]:
Yeah. And I would think too, depending on your growth strategy and how aggressive you wanna be with that growth, you know, after that.
Stu [00:23:16]:
Yeah. That’s a deep subject. I mean, there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with growth, but some level of growth is almost required to have a living company.
Katie [00:23:26]:
Yeah. I think a lot of us are still having scars from the recession and having to let go of so many people, and then wanting to be very conservative rebuilding to where, on the other side of that, you’re burning out existing staff.
Stu [00:23:40]:
Yeah. I mean, I’m a big fan of the book Small Giants too, which is to say bigger isn’t better for the sake of it. But for a company that wants to have sharp people engaged and productive, those people are growing. And if you want them to stay and have the opportunity with you, then you have to grow on a comparable rate to create that opportunity. And it doesn’t mean you’re growing it super steep, but you need to be growing in some context. Even if it’s work sophistication, not just number of people. So I’m not sure that there’s again, in a longevity sense, there’s a way around it other than you make a decision that you’re gonna be boutique and you stay there. And, certainly, that is a legitimate option for a business.
Stu [00:24:28]:
It’s probably not the type of business that’s gonna be tapping you or I for advice on how to grow and operate differently.
Katie [00:24:36]:
I mean, I don’t know, Stu. You and I both have really nice fulfilling careers and consultancies where we have niched down. I think we would both be considered firms with precision consulting for a very particular buyer.
Stu [00:24:53]:
Yeah. This is true.
Katie [00:24:54]:
But I think you’re right in the world of designing.
Stu [00:24:57]:
Another thing that strikes me when it comes to impact for an operating system is if philosophically I’m a fan. I’m an athlete and a coach of athletics. And I think a lot translates between that world and our world. And there’s a book out there that Bill Walsh wrote, which says the score takes care of itself. He was a coach of the 40 niners when they were a dynasty. And in that book, basically and everyone would consider him kind of a tactical genius, but he would say it’s not the tactical genius part that made us successful. It’s the fact that we had a system that we were 100% committed to and everyone had to operate in or work somewhere else. And you see that in these highly successful organizations like the Ritz Carlton and sports teams that pay attention to the how you do things and the details and the score and the business success will take care of itself.
Katie [00:25:53]:
Yeah. There’s a lot of organizations, I think, in the design and construction space that have come to the realization that it’s hard to differentiate on technical preeminence these days. Everybody’s got resume. Everybody’s got relationships, and it’s really hard to say, my electrical engineer is just smarter than your electrical engineer. And so they’re doubling down on being intentional with what that customer experience looks like. And taking some notes from those service driven industries, such as the Ritz Carlton, such as some of those others, and they’re trying to be very deliberate in how they’re delivering these professional services in a way that their buyers come to appreciate, pay a premium for, and ask for even by name. And I think that that’s becoming more and more part of a conversation within these firms and certainly something that they’re trying to integrate into their operating systems so that it becomes systematic. And there’s no exception.
Katie [00:26:52]:
You don’t have it’s only adopted in 1 studio or only in 1 office or whoever the PX is leads it this way and that one leads it that way. No. It’s across the organization. You get a paycheck from me. This is how we do things. And if you don’t like it, sorry.
Stu [00:27:07]:
Yeah. We tried to tackle that in a couple different ways, and it was it was a good part of the story here. And because we were acquiring firms as part of our growth strategy was deliberate. And we figured out early on that onboarding a new firm was a challenge to get them to do things the way that we wanted them done. So we got ISO certified.
Katie [00:27:27]:
Nobody else changed. We don’t like that.
Stu [00:27:29]:
When we became an ISO certified company, we said, this is the way we’re gonna do things. In order to keep our certification, you have to do things this way. And that argument went away. And I thought at that time, I thought, well, we really got our act together. And it was when I first got exposed to an operating system and I kind of overlaid it on our system when I saw the gaps that we hadn’t filled yet. It was probably one of the more impactful things I ever did in my career was implementing a good operating system in our business. And part of that kind of connecting to your thought about what we do differently and how that experience is different, was this kind of elemental market strategy of what 2 or 3 things combined that we do that differentiate us from everybody else. And it’s not just technical competence.
Katie [00:28:15]:
No. No. It’s funny. I live here in Atlanta. It’s the summer, so we’re doing family road trips and whatnot. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with this gas station, but if you heard of Buc ee’s, that’s kind of in Florida, Texas.
Stu [00:28:29]:
Indeed, I have.
Katie [00:28:30]:
People will argue with me. It’s not a gas station. That’s a travel experience, but they’ve done just that. They took something that was a critical pain point for the average traveler, which was nobody wants to stop at a gas station and go to the potty. No no mom wants to get their kids out and do that, and everybody feels like it’s super sketchy. And they’re like, you know what? We’re gonna blow that up. We’re gonna have a 100 stalls, and it’s gonna be manned all the time, and it’s always gonna be clean, and you’re never gonna wait in line and this, that, and the other. And by golly, I get excited when I see Buc ee’s 63 miles away.
Katie [00:29:05]:
I’m like, that’s an hour away. Well, I can hold it. We’re gonna go.
Stu [00:29:09]:
I can make it.
Katie [00:29:12]:
It just kinda makes me think what are gonna be some of those cornerstone experiences that are gonna come out of and this is a very smart industry. Design and construction professionals are so super smart. They do amazing things that transform the world in which we live, the facilities that we go in every day. And I can’t wait to see what some of these unique experiences are that these owners kinda perk up at that say, yes. I want that.
Stu [00:29:39]:
I love that you say that because I’ve always felt myself a champion for the people that do what we do and coming through those ranks myself. And I do think that architects, engineers, construction folks are fantastic people. And I hate when we create hardship for ourselves because we are not good business people or good managers of our operations. And so even though I may seem counterintuitive, people tend to talk bottom line, but bottom line is a little bit secondary to me in terms of it takes care of itself if you take care of the people and the operation. And I’ve always wanted it’s a bit of a hero business. We have people that will do whatever it takes to get a project across the finish line that can be ridiculous hours and effort and commitment. And I always wanted us to be able to achieve that same excellence with a little more balance. And, ironically, I feel like having a good system is one of the ways we can do that and improve the experience of everyone that does what we do.
Katie [00:30:44]:
Well and in working with you, Stew, and we have some shared clientele that have gone through some of your consulting. I think the big takeaway that I have is sometimes because we do work in a quote, unquote creative environment, you think about architects and certainly interior designers and engineers to some degree really think of themselves as being creative. The idea of adopting an operating system does not stifle creativity. Putting a framework around your operations can actually infuse some really nice energy and can focus that creativity versus stifle it. And I’ve seen that through some of our shared clientele.
Stu [00:31:22]:
Doctor. Yeah. That’s a really big and powerful statement because I do think that’s one of the hesitations people have about moving forward here is they do fear being told how to do it, to be being put in a box or lose some of their autonomy, but a good system well implemented actually creates the space to enable creativity. And if you’re well run, you should have more opportunity and more time to ideate and create because you’re spending less on rework and inefficient execution.
Katie [00:32:00]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Stu, this has been great talking through things. I know we probably have perked a lot of interest of our listeners. What is the best way for our listeners to learn more about AEC ops, your consulting organization and what you do, and what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you? And I certainly think that we should include a subscribe link in our show notes for people to subscribe to your newsletter so they can get all of your little nuggets of information delivered directly to them. But what’s the best way for them to reach you?
Stu [00:32:30]:
Yeah. The website is a good way to see what’s going on, which is aechyphenops.com. LinkedIn is actually a really good way to reach me. I mean, I’m certainly my email is a good way to [email protected], but I’m always kinda paying attention to LinkedIn. You can find my profile there, the company’s profile there, and you can message me there. And I’m pretty responsive, so that’d be the place I would point people.
Katie [00:33:04]:
That’s great. Because that kinda goes along with one of our Smarter g’s best practices as we think everybody in the design and construction space should spend 5 to 15 minutes a day on LinkedIn. Staying up to date with what’s going on in our world, connecting with individuals that you could do business with or partner with, and just being part of the community there. It’s it’s easier than you think, but a great way to build your network that doesn’t take too much time out of your day.
Stu [00:33:28]:
Yeah. And I know there’s some people who say that LinkedIn occasionally wanders outside of business matters, but that’s compared to the other social platforms. It’s certainly way better. And candidly, part of me longs for the days where there were less choices because everybody at least knew where to look. And from a business perspective, if more people kind of align around LinkedIn, we all benefit from that consistency. So I would definitely be a supporter of that.
Katie [00:33:59]:
Well, Stu, thank you so much for joining us on the AEC Marketing for Principles podcast. And for those of you that listened in today, make sure you tune in to Stu and his team at AEC Ops, and give it some thought. What does your organization need to kinda take it to the next level? And if you find yourself on that endless hamster wheel, get off of it. Get off of it this year, and seek out some partnership with Stu and his team. I don’t think you’ll regret it. Until next time, everybody, stay smart out there. AEC Marketing for Principles is presented by Smartages, 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 SmartEgies.
Katie [00:34:49]:
I would love to hear from you. If you have a question, a guest request, or a topic request for a future episode, send an email or a voice memo to podcast at smartages.com. And if you’re looking for past episodes, be sure to visit our podcast page at smartergies.com/podcast. We hope you’ll tell your friends and colleagues about our show, and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on future episodes. Thanks for listening.