ALEX
Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Build Project. This episode is dropping right after the final wrap-up for the Month of Modern here on the Front Range. It was really great to reconnect with a bunch of people that I haven't seen in a while, and also to finally meet some familiar faces in person. It's just funny how, with modern technology, social media, and all that, people can feel really familiar without ever actually being in the same room. It was great to have an event like that to bridge those inherent gaps.

I also know the CGBG Home Tour recently took place. While I wasn't able to attend because of some last-minute commitments, I did hear it was a massive success, and it was really cool to see all the homes that were showcased. Beyond that, I think it's just a really powerful initiative, a great resource, and continuing to see it gain momentum in the industry is really great.

This week's guest was Laura Marion of Flight Architecture. Same as the last few episodes, this was actually recorded a little while ago, but I don't really think we talked about anything that would be time-relative. I was first introduced to Laura through Adam Wagoner, actually, a while back. While we haven't had the chance to work together directly, we've crossed paths several times, and in fact I once recommended Laura to a client looking for an architect. When I recommended her, you inevitably have to describe them beyond just their professional portfolio, and the way that I went about that is how I would describe her to whomever is listening to this podcast.

One of the things that stands out most to me about who she is, both professionally and personally, to the extent that I know her, is her ability to listen. And I mean really listen. I'd go as far as to say that from my perspective, it's one of her superpowers, and I think it shows up not only in how she connects with people, but also in how she approaches her work. There is a real connection that is tangible when she describes how she goes about her process. I think that's rare, first off, but it's also valuable, and it's one of the things that makes her such a strong presence in the field.

In this episode, Laura and I cover a lot of ground. We go from the pressures and opportunities of being part of a multi-generational industry all the way to what we hope will change for the next generation, and perhaps most specifically our children. It was a great, thoughtful conversation. It gave me plenty to reflect on afterwards, and I'm hoping it will do the same for you. So let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Laura Marion of Flight Architecture.

LAURA
I'm Laura Marion. I'm a licensed architect, and I am the founding principal of Flight Architecture.

ALEX
How would you describe Flight Architecture?

LAURA
Flight Architecture is committed to helping our clients get their dreams off the ground. We do simple, modern mountain architecture.

ALEX
Love it. When I've shown your aesthetic to other people, I think modern mountain is a very accurate way of illustrating it. Going back to that change in intention we briefly touched on before we were recording: where was Flight Architecture, and where is the intention now being redirected?

LAURA
For a good amount of time, I found a niche in leveraging my design thinking toward always finding efficiencies. I built Flight on the original idea of, like, go light, go now. As somebody who built my own house for my own family, and was so happy I did it, ripped off the Band-Aid and did it with efficiency of cost and speed and time, I always took a lot of pride in that. I was able to raise my kids in a home that I love, that I designed, that responds to the environment. A lot of times people aren't building a custom home until they're retirement age, when the kids are leaving the house.

So I've had an intention of affording my friends, my community, my clients opportunities to build something they thought they couldn't do yet. And that's been wonderful, and the relationships I've built through those experiences have become some of my very best friends. So I'm really proud of what I have accomplished. And I have also found that there's something in me that is ready to not be the discount architect anymore.

It's not necessarily that I'm aiming only for a high-end market. That's not the new narrative. But I have had to ask myself, what is it that I truly do best? And is always beating up contractors and subcontractors, and the design itself, for a lower cost always offering the best outcome?

ALEX
Yeah. It's just not the problem you want to solve anymore.

LAURA
I don't think so. I have skills in that way that I just want to leverage towards offering an even better service, in a different way.

ALEX
I think so many people, especially people who started their company in the grassroots sort of way, have inevitably had to work their way up through the markets, and I know undoubtedly I did as well. There's a point in time when you just want to manifest this end product so bad, because it's something you care about. But then you take a step back and go: yes, we can get this, but in order for me to do that, I'm going to have to compromise on so many business principles, or I'm going to be giving away my time for free. And if I was being honest, this expectation wasn't set in a way that creates an end product in alignment with this budget or this timescale, or whatever part of the project management triangle you want to talk about at that moment. Communicating that and pivoting is a very stressful endeavor.

LAURA
Well, I think there's reciprocity here, because the best, most aligned projects for me have been ones that went out of the gate with a partner who helped the owners understand that an architect is essential to the design. In more of a mid-range market, I'm constantly having to prove and demonstrate that you need an architect, that you've got to pay these people for their skillset. When I worked with builders who backed me up, backed up my fees, backed up how much time it takes to do this stuff, backed up that I need to be part of the project until they're putting doorstops on: that's not the same project as, oh, let's plug Laura in early and just get permit documents, and they'll be fine.

ALEX
That's a responsibility of the industry as a whole. I had an experience recently where a client who had already signed with me was going through the process of signing with the architect, and they were pushing back on the CA fees a little bit, saying, this is a very big number. And my simple response was that I won't do the project if that's not part of the budget. I then got an email basically saying, never had a contractor say that before. That's mind-boggling to me, because that's the equivalent of an architect saying, we don't want the contractor to be a part of these early conversations to tell us what things are going to cost, to tell us what their experience shows about how to build it. I would simply say, I don't think that's a good fit. It's okay, you can do it that way, but it's just not how my company is set up.

But also, if I have that expectation, I have to return it to the design team: I need you all the way through here too, or else you cannot expect my company to hit the standard that we've set. There are multiple pieces here. Easier said than done, but the industry as a whole needs to make sure we're educating the client: if you want to hire us for our expertise, we're going to communicate the best path forward to hit your end result through that expertise. How we communicate that, and the willingness of the client to take that in and make it real, is the key part of all of it.

LAURA
Yeah. I've spent a lot of time hoping for the contractor that is like you. One who says, well, I won't take that job if you don't have the designer a part of it the whole way. I've met a couple, and when I've had the awesome opportunity to work with them on a project, it goes well for all of us.

It's become abundantly clear to me that if that's the wish I have, I need to start by doing that on my end. Backing up contractors who might have a higher management fee than others, because that fee is worth every penny if the job is run well: reduced mistakes, reduced inefficiencies, reduced drama, reduced budget overruns. I've made a shift, energetically, towards putting out there what I want. For years, I've been driving clients towards, oh, I know this welder, he'll do it for less. And that is not serving me anymore, or my clients. So now I'm like: yeah, this guy's good. He's the best. He might cost 25% more than the other guys, and he's still worth it.

ALEX
This is touching on so many things right here for me. Number one, I'm a relatively younger person within the industry, so that probably creates a little bit of a dynamic for me internally, but also perception-wise from potential clients in the sales process. The fact that I'm a third-generation builder, and they just didn't know if I had the experience, despite the fact that my portfolio was more than the other competitors. It's just perception. I have to remind myself that the people who do hire me, hire me because I'm an expert. And I try to say, hey, if you're hiring me as the expert, you have an obligation to allow me to be the expert. But then I internally also have an obligation to assert myself as being that expert, and that's way easier said than done, especially for me. But it's in those moments where I go: I know this is better. This is risk management. This is how we protect the project. This is how we assure a level of delivery. I believe in this. I have to be willing to stand up for it, or everything I've spent my time building here is worthless.

LAURA
And I'm a little older than you, so I've been asking myself: is my portfolio clear about what my skillset is? That's always a moving target. I certainly need to develop that, I totally need to improve my website. Is my narrative clear with clients about the services that I offer, how much time it really takes us, how much it's going to cost, with total transparency? And if those things are all on the table and they're still not too sure about my fees, just let them go. Return to sender with love.

Which is really hard to do. I have employees, I have overhead. Our projects last a long time. We're in it for years, we're in that relationship, and to constantly have to convince somebody of my value is just exhausting. I'm just starting to draw a line: if you don't think you need an architect, I'm probably not the right person for you.

ALEX
Yeah. You said before that you control what you can control, and you can't control what you can't, and I think that's real in personal life, business, and the inevitable overlap of those two things. I do try to remind myself, sometimes successfully, most of the time unsuccessfully, that I can't control the client into being the ideal client, or into wanting the product that I'm selling. In order for me to say that, I have to be okay with the boundary being drawn and stood behind: if you're not the right fit for me, I have to be willing to walk away. In the past, I am incredibly guilty of trying to manifest people or their projects into being such, because I looked at it as a point of moving up through that hierarchy. And every single time I've done that, in hindsight, it's, oh, we lost a ton of money on that one, or oh God, the sleepless nights on that one compared to the other projects, it's tenfold.

LAURA
Yeah, totally.

ALEX
I'd be interested to hear what you think of this, especially as you're going through your marketing journey, rebranding in a way. I've chosen, and this has been a strategy for a long time, but it's the moment of culmination now, to pivot the consumer journey we're marketing to. In the past, a lot of times it was the architects that were facilitating us, and we were using marketing as a way of educating and displaying our expertise. What I found was that the projects I was being brought, very rarely were they brought to me because they thought I'm the best at this thing. They needed me to make it into something else, and they knew I cared so much that I would almost take it on personally to never let it dip below a certain level. And I think I was leveraged a little bit for that. Not in all situations, but definitely in some.

So this upcoming year, with the exception of one project, our three others all signed with us before the designer. I started articulating that even in the sales process. Hey, you already have an architect? Unless we're familiar with them, have an established relationship, or they're willing to reach out to us directly and have that conversation, we're probably not interested. You're hiring us because of this engine I've built, this machine of a company with all these inputs that are required. Now it's our responsibility to facilitate a designer who will participate in that machine: detail-oriented, engages with pre-construction, on-site for CA, all the way through. There are certain designers whose structure fits with that, and others that don't. If I'm going to tell you I'm going to hit this mark, I have to have that other piece of it. So while designer relationships are incredibly important to us, we actually want to be marketing directly to the consumer, as early in that journey as possible.

LAURA
Well, it's great that you can figure that out now. Like you were saying: draw a boundary and be willing to just let some go if it's not going to fit. In today's environment of what it takes to get something designed and permitted and built, we confront tremendous regulatory constraints. It's tremendously complicated. My grandfather was a practicing architect. Neither of my parents were, but both of my grandfathers were. And I don't even know that they would recognize the types of details, the type of documentation that I have to put down to do a single-family home, much less the stadiums that they were doing. It will eat you alive if you don't have some kind of boundaries. There's no way to be a parent, there's no way to be a contributing community member, unless you're a little bit of a hard-ass about your business.

This is what works for me, and this is what does not work for me, regardless of what it looks like for you. A friend of mine is a musician, and she told me that Prince, this is just hearsay, famously would not listen to anyone else's music for months before going to record. Just shut out the way other people did business, until he could hear his own rhythm and work. We're so interconnected with the way other people run their businesses that I have to deliberately ask myself: what are my boundaries? What allows me to be a good parent and community member, taking care of my aging parents? Those things might really not look like the way other people do business. And how hard it is to say no to a project that maybe had real potential, or would fill the hole. Every day, it feels hard to stick to my convictions.

ALEX
Yeah. I'm sure you've gotten this objection as much as I have: oh, why is construction so much more expensive than it used to be? Yes, costs are rising, inflation, everyone's aware of it. But there's another layer. The reality is that we are not building the same home of 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago, not even two years ago with the new energy code. If you took the house that's being permitted right now against the house that was permitted a year ago, there are massive differences that equate to a very tangible line item in that budget. And accordingly, it takes another layer of expertise to navigate all of that.

Maybe this is where the education part comes in, and marketing can be education: in order to navigate that, you need a team. Sometimes people are asking one person to take on all those things. Laura, be the expert in permitting in Boulder, permitting in Denver, permitting wherever else. And also thermal envelopes. And also millwork details. And God knows what else. That's a lot. I actually think you could make the argument that you'd be degrading the product by having one person be the expert in all of those things. That's where the contractor's team comes in. That's where the design team comes in. There's a reason you're not the structural engineer as well. That was delegated a long time ago and accepted within the industry. The IRC did claim that architects were able to engineer within certain confines, but things just got too complicated. I think we're at that point again. Communicating that to clients, in tangent with setting the expectation that there's a cost associated with it, is a really hard thing to do, but incredibly necessary right now.

LAURA
I agree. I think it's incumbent upon us to have an elevator speech about that. A really clear narrative: these are the tasks we have to perform, these are the milestones, this is what it takes to get to each one of those milestones, and this is the kind of expertise it takes to do it properly.

ALEX
So I met your son briefly at the open house you had. And you have one more?

LAURA
Yes, I have a daughter.

ALEX
If they were to say, hey, I want to go into the trades, or the design world, what would your opinion of that be?

LAURA
Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. I have thought about if they said, I want to go into architecture. Because they both show they're just like me: they get ideas, and they want to make stuff, and they want to draw it, and they could have that bug. And I've wondered what I'd say, because it's been a journey for me. It hasn't been that easy.

If they were to go into the trades: I don't think I have the type of prejudice that was everywhere in our parents' generation. Because I've worked with the trades. Those guys are amazing. What they can do is amazing, and I have so much admiration for their work and their skillset. I have spent, honestly, a chunk of my career vouching for them to clients. This guy is a master. It has taken him his whole life to be able to do this. He has hundreds of thousands of dollars of millwork equipment in a warehouse. This isn't some job where you can undercut him or keep looking for something cheaper and cheaper. I have those conversations enough that it's quite real for me how much I admire that skillset. So if my son was like, I love this, I want to be a carpenter my whole life, I think now's a good time. That is a dying trade. There are fewer people who can truly do it well, and they should be compensated for that contribution. I think it's a good job.

ALEX
I've joked about this before: if I wanted to just run a business that was about money, I'd probably be a plumber. I'd run the best plumbing company in Colorado. Those pipes would be set with laser levels, and we would just crush. But life is about balancing what you care about.

I do think it's a really interesting culmination point, steering this towards the trades. Because of the shortage, and also because of technology: you're not going to replace the guy setting the pipe, or the millwork guy, or the cabinetmaker. You're never going to replace those people. But if we recognize what's inhibiting growth, or where we can be better: we don't need the framer to break his back 17 times in order for a house to be built. What if we use technology to automate the production of walls, and then we're using cranes and people on site to coordinate these things being installed? They're being built in a manufacturing facility to custom-level spec, brought onto site, installed by masters within that craft. Those are now framers. We're just redefining what a framer is. That's happened countless times throughout history. It used to be an electrician was running knob-and-tube. Nowadays, they're running ethernet cables. It's just different, and we adapt. The more we promote that, the more sustainable the trades become, and it's also more interesting to the youth coming up.

I think about trim carpentry as something I care about enormously. Growing up, that was my first thing, trim carpentry. And trim carpentry has done a unique thing: cabinetmakers and trim carpenters are artists, craftspeople, and I think that's because they've been able to tell a story of something being made in your home. Representing the industry, we can extend that to the stuff hidden behind your walls, telling the story of those people. Part of this podcast, actually, when I've debated what I wanted it to be, was: how do I tell the story of the guy sweeping the floors? Because let me tell you, that guy is incredibly important to that project, and he's got a story to tell. He's probably a family person, or a young person growing up, just like anyone else. If you can make those stories known to people, it's going to elevate them to the point where it's an admirable profession, a pursuable one.

LAURA
There is an extent to which we can educate clients about everything that's going on in that wall assembly. One of the things I take pride in is our documentation. It's necessary to the process, both to get the client's wishes on paper and for code conformance. And something we do a little bit differently is that we make those graphically engaging, so we can communicate to the client and to the site too. It's in color, it's in 3D, it includes a picture from a past job, so that we all are really getting on the same page. You have your podcast, I have my drawings. That's my way of saying: maybe there's a way I can bump this up a notch, so that the clients who are paying for this have an appreciation for all the layers in this wall assembly. Somebody has to come and do the waterproofing and flashing, and somebody has to come and do the insulation, and all of those are really meaningful toward a house that is built to last and will perform well in this climate.

ALEX
If my daughter came to me, and I'll be completely honest, I hope she'll say she wants to be an architect, not a contractor. But I would be so excited.

LAURA
You'd be psyched.

ALEX
Oh my God. I think about how cool it would be to have my daughter design something, and then Dad will go build it. That's amazing. That is a legacy story to me. I would enjoy that beyond anything. Even now, some of my favorite moments are when I bring my dad details that I've already figured out, but I know he loves solving puzzles like that. I'm like, Dad, what do you think about this? I just love those conversations.

LAURA
First off, just creating is a fun thing, and this industry is about creating. You can really express yourself across the entire spectrum, design down to the person sweeping the floor. It's a unique industry in that you can do that. And if I think about what I would want for my daughter: just express who you are throughout life. And if you can do that through your profession, wow, you're lucky.

We are so lucky that we get to be in this industry, where we see the work become a real thing that somebody can really use, and make some meaningful change in their lives, in their physical environment. Through COVID, sorry, I keep going back to that, we realized the limitations of digital experiences, in my opinion. There are a lot of benefits, but I think we hit a hard stop where it's actually not life to just be on Zoom calls all the time. That's not how most of us define a rich life. Having physical experiences that touch your senses is. Having space, and gathering with people, friends and neighbors, and having backyard barbecues, and having an environment that makes that happen. That is a rich life. And here we are, right in the middle of a lot more interest in physical, in-person experiences.

ALEX
It excites me for young people to be part of the industry because of what you just described. Right now it's a luxury product to have your home be those things. I think the future has to be that we don't have to design cookie-cutter things. We can find efficient ways to build creative spaces where the way you feel, the way you coexist with your community, is inherently better as a result. I think the younger generations are a little more aware of that need for connection, maybe as a result of COVID, having been starved of it. That starts with the design process, and it's brought into existence through the construction element. If everyone recognizes that it's not just a monetary transaction, that it can be about creating a space that supports the things we as a society care about, that's going to benefit everybody.

LAURA
I totally agree. What you're describing has become necessary anyway in my process of working towards a design with clients, because inevitably, at any budget, the scope of what they wanted to do is just too much. I'm guilty of it too. We all have a budget down here, and these champagne dreams that are up here, and that's okay. That's a creative mind in action. It thinks big, it thinks outside the lines, and it should. To get it built and really bring it into the physical world, we have to have a lot of conversations about: what's your narrative? Get clear on what you really want. That creates a hierarchy, and we can put something at the top: if we do nothing else, we get this. Sometimes it's the barbecue, sometimes it's the windows. When I know that, we start to get at what you're saying. It doesn't necessarily have to be whole hog to start to access a space that supports how you want to feel.

ALEX
Yeah. I wrote down "what is your narrative," because that is a more eloquent phrasing of what I often try to ask. I ask people to define what value is, which is a very hard question, actually. They're like, well... money? Or is it craftsmanship? Or experience, or you want the space to feel this way? You need to define that before you even begin this process, because once you're in the process, it's too late. You're going to constantly get these different value equations put in front of you, and you're not going to know where your center is anymore. So, what is your narrative. I love that phrasing.

And you referenced branding exercises. A branding line I've debated using is that everyone deserves a Fernhill home once in their life. It's meant to be that if somebody goes, oh, that's a Fernhill, it means there's an experiential element to it, that it feels a certain way: design and a high level of craftsmanship, tangible within the home. I don't think we're quite there yet, I think we've got a lot of work to do, but that's a narrative, a story in itself, and I love that.

LAURA
Now I'm curious, is that ever a tricky conversation to have? I think clients approach us because we're technicians. We have expertise in a field that has technical quality to it. And then somehow we wax philosophical and start asking them, well, how do you want to feel? Is that ever a tricky conversation for you?

ALEX
Yes. And I've brainstormed a lot on it, because, and this is going to sound a little bit narcissistic, it's a little bit frustrating sometimes when you see what people value, or how they choose to approach certain parts of the design process, when I know: if we did this, it would be so much better. I wish there was more reliance on the design and construction team. Hey, this is the end thing that we want, we are going to rely on you to get us there. Because then you're facilitating the expertise. In tangent with that, Fernhill feeling a certain way, that's a messaging, an idea, a concept. If you believe in that concept, if you believe you want that, we can lay out a generalized path on how to get there, but at a certain point in time you've got to hand over those reins and let me go to work.

LAURA
That is an interesting idea. I'm sure all the architects with all the big egos are so happy right now.

ALEX
They're busy.

LAURA
We had a brief conversation about architects and architects' egos earlier. I had a mentor when I was just starting out in my career who said, a project is only as enlightened as the client.

ALEX
Ooh.

LAURA
Pretty good, huh? I think that's a saying in architecture, I don't know who to attribute it to. And that is abundantly clear in the work that I do. And yet, I have been humbled and amazed by how sometimes the clients want something that I didn't see for the project. If I can set my ego aside without prejudice and take on the thought exercise of what they saw: not always, but there have been occasions where that left-field idea really made the project better. I grew as a designer, and we grew in our relationship with each other, of honesty and respect and openness, because it's their dream. When they felt heard, and I integrated it into the design in a way that surprised them, it lights them up, they're psyched, and the rest of the project goes so well, because they know I'm not just going to override them all the time.

ALEX
Yeah. That's incredibly true, and I can think of multiple experiences where that has manifested. These are people's homes, it's their life, and most of the time it's probably the biggest investment they've ever made.

I'll take it to a more acute example, and I'd be interested to hear what you think, because I do not have a determined approach on this yet. There are certain standards I never want to dip below. You articulated before that you're trying to solve a problem you don't want to be solving. I have that same predicament, and an example would be windows. Certain times I'll get specifications for windows, and I'm like, we just don't do it that way. We want this brand installed by these people. I understand the price point, but if I'm being hired to hit this expectation, we can't do it another way. They don't get the fifth bathroom if that means we have to buy these windows. But we have to, as a team, communicate that to them. And I've gotten pushback from the design team on that.

I don't mean that to be demeaning. It's that I want to represent something, and I want people to trust me to always hit that standard, during the good times and the inevitably bad. Communicating that with the design team is not an easy one. Say we're working together and I was like, hey, just so you know, this windows stuff, I understand the appeal, but for us, we just won't install it. I'm debating if that's how I need to approach it, or if it needs to be more gentle. Because I'm worried that if I'm too gentle about it, in the end, we both know how that's going to go. I'm probably going to install the inferior window.

LAURA
That's what I'm figuring out. The longer I've been in practice, the more standards I've decided to hold to, and I've had to learn them the hard way, unfortunately. I'm asking myself, are there some standards I can hold to before I learn the hard way, and I'm stuck holding the bag with a project that died by a thousand cuts and became something that is no longer a service to the owner? Thank God it's never gotten that bad, but you know what I mean. I don't want that to happen.

If you figure it out, let me know. For me, it's become kind of a gut feel. I feel gross, I can't sleep at night, if I'm on the precipice of making a change to the design, a compromise on a specification, under pressure from the client. And I've learned, maybe from that gut feel, the culmination of my experience at this point, that I can tell: if I'm digging in my heels, it's worth it. And I'm going to tell them. But I think I may buy those times that I dig in my heels with the political capital of giving in on others. I'm not sure if I'm wrong about that, but that's the feeling I have right now.

ALEX
I like that approach, because I think it's a healthy balance with the ego. It comes down to communication and trust, probably. I can imagine that conversation with the client and the other members of the team: if I'm going to assert the standard here, and we still need the outcome to be as such, we can compromise over here. Articulating what that means might be the hard part. But just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not relevant. I like that approach because it's appropriately providing agency to the client.

LAURA
I want them to feel as empowered as I want to feel trusted and empowered in this process. And so, earlier you had asked, what's the most important thing in the relationship between the owner and the contractor, between the architect and the contractor? That's easy. It's trust.

ALEX
Every single episode, it's come up.

LAURA
Because it's way too complicated. We can't create a graph, we can't create a spreadsheet of specifications for how one runs the budget. Even though engaging those conversations is necessary, it always has to come down to the owner trusting that we have their best interest at heart. That we heard them, that we know what they're trying to accomplish through this project. And them trusting that they hired somebody who has standards. If I'm going to put my name on it, it has to be like this.

ALEX
I was told an interesting way of thinking about this. Say you're a business investor and you purchase a sports team. You're not the expert on sports, so you hire a general manager, you hire a coach. You're still responsible for the team at the end of the day, but you have to allow those team members to go out there and play. If you're not able to do that, your team is inherently going to suffer. But the team has to conduct itself in a way that cohesively communicates to that owner, who knows nothing about running a basketball team, the highs, the lows, the successes, the failures, what this means and what that means. It's that cohesive depiction that the client needs from their team. They've got their architect, they've got their designer, they've got their builder. That person still has agency and liability in this whole process by design. You have to feed that loop back up and give them that communication, or else it's a defeated system.

LAURA
Love a good sports analogy for management. I could never play ball sports, so.

ALEX
Admittedly, I was told this by an investor in a sports team, so I thought it was an apt analogy.

LAURA
What tools do you think... how do you think we can improve? What is working for you to keep the owner up to speed and feeling like they're in control, like there's total transparency throughout the process?

ALEX
Okay. We're open book, fully transparent. Our fees are locked in ahead of time, by design, because we need to have that trust, so we're willing to be transparent about that. We use a software called Adaptive for our cost plus. Basically, the way it works is every receipt, every PO, everything, as soon as it's on the accounting sheets, gets entered into draws. In those draws, everything gets cost coded against the original budgets, and the estimated cost of completion in tangent with that. They also get sent every single PDF of every single file for the records. And at closeout, they get all of those files again in a zipped file, along with all the lien waivers, which is great if shit ever did hit the fan, for lack of a better term.

The problem was that our budgets normally are 200 to 300 line items for a house. At first, in an effort to demonstrate how detail-oriented we were, I was giving them all of those numbers. You need a degree in construction, or 50 years of experience, to know what those numbers mean. A big mistake I made. We now present it through categories. And I convey to the client that if they ever have questions, number one, I look at them as having an obligation to communicate those questions to me. They are an active member of this process. I'll try to be as preemptive as possible in answering everything, but I still expect them to look at the documents we send. And if there ever is something of concern, the odds are that I'm aware of it, and I will be bringing it up to them via whatever document or announcement or owner-architect meeting.

That one's been really powerful for us, because they can actually see: okay, we had to do drywall out of order, we had everyone come back as we replaced that staircase because of this quality concern, the fee for this was $1,700. They can actually see that. And they go, okay, that change order expectation was set via this change event document. We went a little over, but here's the actual thing. I think that's a really great way of establishing trust.

The other one for us: we do daily logs internally, but we now send out a biweekly summary report to the clients. This is where we're super confident, this is where our concern is, these are the upcoming expectations. That one's really nice because it allows us to control that narrative a little bit. We also do automated RFI status reports and automated submittal reports through Procore, so the client, architect, engineer, project manager can see: hey, we have 17 questions out right now, four of them are due next week, three of them haven't been answered and are in the critical path. It helps everyone be on the same page the whole time. Some people love that. Some people are like, oh, well, we used to do Post-it Notes and it worked fine for 50 years.

LAURA
That's interesting. I've similarly had a journey of too much information, not enough. In the last two years, I basically took all the questions that I seem to have received from clients and just made that the spreadsheet. What phase are we in? Where are we? How much have we spent on design? How much is left in design? What has been accomplished? Those became the columns, and I was like, okay, this works. Every month they get a bill: here's where we are, here's what we've done, here's how much is left.

ALEX
I had a client on a very recent project who sent me this incredible email, basically saying that he's been around a lot of construction, he's not surprised that we've gone a little bit over budget and the timetable's been extended, he just appreciates those things being communicated. That's literally what I'm striving for. A "we hit the mark on this one" kind of moment. I followed up asking some questions, and he said, you know, I'm not happy that we're over budget. And over budget is a relative term, because it's really change orders that caused the initial number to escalate. But the thing is, I just need to always be able to plan for it. He knew other situations where people weren't communicated that expectation ahead of time, and that's where the problems happen.

LAURA
That's great feedback.

ALEX
Taking it full circle back to what we can control: I've had a problem in the past of taking the successes and shortcomings of projects, which are all inevitable, a little too personally. I'm sure you resonate with this. The companies are just so much of who we are, despite the attempt at a boundary between the business and our personal life. The thing I've had to communicate to our project manager, Michael, is that our internal policy is: whenever we get information, specifically the bad information, we are going to communicate it in real time, no matter the consequences.

We used to wait. Hey, we're going to come up with a solution for this first, and then we'll communicate it once we've figured it out, and it'll be easier. Everyone's probably done that in all facets of life. But the problem is, I don't know if that's sustainable, because I'm basically trying to make sure I can control it. The reality is: if we just communicated, hey, this happened today on site, it goes out right there. I can't control whether that client believes in our processes and will back us to solve it for them. What I can control is communicating in a timely manner, and having systems in place to move on to the next step. I have to accept that as a business owner, and that means, in turn, they're sometimes going to be upset with me. I have to be okay with that. I want to align myself with clients who are okay with that process as well. Choose clients over projects is kind of a short-term initiative for us right now, and I think those conversations become easier as a result.

LAURA
That's a great way of looking at that, and probably better for your mental health. I worked with a contractor, Deborah, and he has a joke that construction always wins. We can't beat it. We can't be ahead of it. We can't eliminate mistakes. I like that saying. Maybe going into a relationship with a client, it helps to keep the humor in it. This is a beast. There are so many moving parts, so many people are going to touch this, and we're all human, and we show what we have by how we confront challenges.

But some clients, and I'm finding it's actually a larger percentage than not, they just want me to handle it. They want to trust that I'm going to handle it. They hired me to take that load off of them. Of course, the portion of work that I do, the fee associated with it, is tiny compared to what you do, so maybe there's a different level of communication that they want. But more and more, I feel it out with the client: how much do you want to be hands-on with this? And more often than not, they want me to go pretty far with it, present why in a really compelling, beautiful way, and then they jump on with me.

ALEX
I think that I, as the general contractor, have an obligation to create healthy boundaries that set everyone up for success, including the client. And that also involves the designer. Like you were saying, if the client wants you to take care of it, okay, let's invite you into this process then as well, and let you know our line of thought. Because we're being hired and paid and trusted to figure out these details. How can I create that end product without inviting you into all facets of that process?

LAURA
Yeah. And I realize the risk inherent in what I just said: if the client is pretty disconnected from the constraints and hardships and complexities associated with delivering the product they approved, they're not very understanding of what it takes to get there, in terms of cost and adjustments and modifications. If they were totally out of touch and then all of a sudden parachuted in, they'd be like, what the...

So maybe for those clients who just want to hire a professional and say, do it, handle it, go build my dream house, part of our narrative is to find out what they're interested in about the project, and use that to invite them to be a little more a part of the process than they otherwise would be, so they understand the whole rainbow of what it's going to take to get from A to B.

ALEX
Of course. So, I've debated wanting a Walter Cronkite sign-off for all this, and I didn't know what I wanted it to be. But I'll give credit to my sister: something that we always did in our travels together was rosebud thorn. You know what that is?

LAURA
Yeah. My thorn is some growing pains with my business. I am finally making the changes that I've been talking about doing for years, and that's my bud. This is happening. I finally said no to probably a half dozen projects in the last month, because they would have kept me where I was for the trajectory of that whole job, and I'm really ready for the change this time. I feel growing pains around that. I have less dexterity with the type of work that I'm trying to step into, and it has awoken old insecurities in me, so my thorn and my bud are kind of two sides of the same coin.

ALEX
Hard things are exciting, right? As most things are.

LAURA
And my rose, which is also part of this: I just feel full of appreciation for my community and my family, who are so awesome. I'm reflecting, thinking of you having a 15-month-old. 15 to 18 months is such a sweet time. For me, that was the danger zone. At 18 months I was like, oh, having kids is amazing, they're so fun, I've totally got this. Pregnant. But my kids are also in a really sweet stage, 9 and 11. They love being with us. Our family skis together, and we had the best ski season ever. Just the four of us playing all day in the snow is incredible, all having fun at the same time.

Part of the changes I've been wanting to make is, like, no more hourly jobs ever again. Even my daughter's like, I don't want to be an architect, because you've got to work a lot.

ALEX
Wow. How insightful is that?

LAURA
Or she said, I want to grow up and be a doctor. Well, I don't really like blood, but I want to be a surgeon so that I can open up your brain and turn off work.

ALEX
Oh, wow. Layers behind that.

LAURA
I know. That's pretty intense, right? There have been conversations like that where I was like, okay, now or never. I have to make these changes, even if it means a few months of hanging on for dear life, lower revenue, while I make a big pivot. It just feels like the hour's at its moment.

ALEX
So I'll conclude by saying this. Before we started, you asked me whether we can talk about my daughter and family, and my response was that it's who we inherently are. What I've really appreciated about this conversation is that, yes, we obviously have opinions about how to build, how to design, how to move the industry forward, but there's this underlying element that we're doing it from the perspective of people that are community-based, that have friends, that have families. We're parents. We're partners. We're all these things, and who we are as that is really what informs all these other conversations. I think it's fun to let people know that. I appreciate the conversation.

LAURA
It's been great.