Deciding To “Go On Your Own” Flashcards
Assuming you are considering “going on your own”, the first question to ask yourself is:
Why do you think that having your own firm is the right thing for you?
We’ve found the answers can be placed into 10 categories, which share a central theme: the desire for greater control over one’s future. These categories are:
- Ability to realize one’s own goal and follow one’s own interests.
- Greater ability to balance one’s personal and professional lives.
- More direct relationship between effort and recognition for one’s professional accomplishments.
- More direct relationship between effort and financial reward.
- Greater control over one’s own destiny, design, and other issues of personal importance.
- Survival during bad economic times.
- Satisfaction of building one’s own practice.
- Ability to be involved in everything.
- Failure to “fit” into an established organization.
- Desire to work with friends, a spouse, or others of one’s own choosing.
The point is, not everyone is cut out to run his or her own firm, but if you feel you have compelling reasons for doing so, there are a number of steps to take before you make the final decision:
- Be clear as to why you are doing it.
- Define the type of firm you want to have.
- Set goals for the first year and for the long term.
- Look at successful models and research how they succeeded.
- Define what special services or abilities you will offer that potential clients need.
- Decide if you have all the basic capabilities necessary to succeed, or if you will need partners and/or colleagues.
- Decide how you will support yourself until the firm is generating an adequate income to pay you.
In the first year, some of the goals can be pretty basic, for example:
- to survive
- to successfully complete three or four assignments
- to secure enough work for the next year
Two key driving forces shape the operation, management, and organization of every architecture firm:
- Choice of technology, define as the system or process the firm employs to do its work
- collective values of the firm’s principals
Technology shapes the firm’s delivery process. Examination of the marketplace reveals three major categories of design firm technologies:
• strong-idea firms
• strong-service firms
• strong-delivery firms
Which are organize to deliver singular expertise or innovation on unique projects
Strong-idea firms
Which are organized to deliver experience and reliability, especially on complex assignments
Strong-service firms
Which are organized to provide highly efficient service on similar or more routine assignments
Strong-delivery firms
Who see their calling as a way of life, typically have as their major goal the opportunity to serve others and produce examples of their discipline
Practice-centered professionals
Who practice their calling as a means of livelihood, more likely have as their personal objective a quantitative bottom lune that is more focused on the tangible rewards of their efforts
Business-centered professionals
10 common models can be used to launch a successful firm, and there is something to be learned from each. These models are:
- Major client as “booster rocket”
- House for mother
- Academic incubator
- Better mousetrap
- Supersalesperson
- Sponsor
- Golden handshake
- Spin-off
- The phoenix
- Starting small
The firm is founded or taken beyond the start-up with the support of a single client willing to gamble on a young firm.
Major client as “booster rocket”
The booster rocket comes in the form of a project for a family member or one completed using family money.
House for mother
Many of the best-known, design firm principals have relied on their teaching positions to provide them with the basic income, time, credibility, and exposure to lay the foundations of a practice.
Academic incubator
Some firms see an unmet need and set it out to fill. In past years, this has included firms that first focused on specialties, such as recycling historic structures
Better mousetrap
Got off ground due in large part to the exceptional slaes skills and client relationships of one or more of the founders
Supersalesperson
Have had other established professionals act as their booster rockets
Sponsor
Sometimes the architect’s former employer provides the new firm’s initial work.
Golden handshake
Firms that break away from established ones where the new-firm members have built their reputations, skills, and potential client base.
Spin-off
The converse of the spin-off is the takeover. In a few cases, a new young leadership takes over a declining or moribund existing organization and revives and reshapes it into a new, vibrant firm.
Phoenix
Some firms are content to begin by doing small projects and building on that base.
Starting small
