Architectural Thought Leadership Business Lessons from Design Excellence with Kevin Kennon

Architectural Thought Leadership Business Lessons from Design Excellence. Welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. I’m Anthony Perl. In this episode, you’re gonna discover how the principles of world class architecture can transform your business approach and leadership style. Kevin Kennon is an amazing expert in what he does.

While he’s currently also the CEO of Beyond zero dedicated development consultants who are building zero carbon luxury eco resorts worldwide, he’s won many awards for projects like Barclays North American headquarters. The Rodin Museum in Seoul. He’s working all around the world. He’s got some invaluable insights on team communication, vision, execution, and blending technology with creativity as well as the value of relationships, particularly with clients.

This is an episode of Biz Bites. You don’t want to miss some really surprising insights from someone. Who has done some amazing things around the world? Sit back and enjoy this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. I have a different kind of thought leader joining me today. I don’t think we’ve actually had someone in the architect space on the program before, but there’s a very good reason we are gonna be exploring all of this today. So bear with us.

But first of all, Kevin, welcome to the program. Thank you,

Anthony. It’s a real pleasure to be here. I enjoy talking to people all over the world and the great thing about these podcasts is it brings you close to home. And infinite number of miles has become inches. And so it’s perfect to be here, even though we’re at completely different places.

It is and it’s funny, isn’t it? Because we’re going to I’m gonna get you to actually, I’ll really get you to introduce yourself properly first, and then I’ve got a, I’ve got something I wanna pick up on, on just what you were saying then. Great.

Terrific. I’m, I am, as you said, I’m an architect.

I’ve been an architects for quite a while now. And I’ve had a, I’d a pretty amazing career up until this point. You never know where it could go, but you, I, I’ve been blessed and having designed many buildings all over the world. I’ve traveled quite a great deal.

And the reason the thing that’s getting me going these days is my latest business, which is actually in real estate primarily. And I have a background in that as well. It’s specifically in the area of luxury hospitality.

We are going to get into that in a moment, but the thing that I wanted to alluded to when you’re coming back was you just casually dropped there about how nice it is with podcasting and being able to go all over the world.

And what’s really interesting is, and I hadn’t thought about it till you said it, is that, the great thing about podcasting is that people can be in a space together, but not together. You can create. An illusion in some respects, and you can create a closeness in other respects. And I think that’s something that’s really, I guess hadn’t thought about it till then very akin to what you try and do in architecture, isn’t it?

Absolutely. In a very physical way.

Absolutely. What a lot of people and just to be clarify that even more, I’m a design architect and that means we’re the kind of point of the tip of the spear of any project. And most of my projects are. Large, complex, involving hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars and thousands of people.

So usually just starts just as we’re doing right now with the conversation or with a client about what it is they’re looking for or, what kind of ideas they have, what their goals are. And I like to do a deep dive in that. So telling and hearing people’s story. And being able to amplify that story and turn that into physical reality from nothing really.

Just the conversation like we’re having right now is what I’ve been doing my whole career.

Isn’t that interesting? Because we have. We do very different things. Podcasting is what I do, architecture is what you do, but yet there’s a very common ground. It’s that listening and extracting stories and trying to amplify as you say, those stories and you do it in a very physical way.

The time period of course that from you getting from. First meeting and extracting stories to actually implementing and being completed, I imagine is can be years in some

cases. Almost always, even for the smallest of projects. You’d be surprised at how long they take. You do them right.

You could certainly do ’em in a fly by nine kind of way, but that’s not who I am and that’s not who my clients is. So tell me a little bit about. The, some of the things that you’ve been doing as far as architecture is concerned. ’cause I know you’ve won many awards over the years and many of the things that you’ve been involved with are high profile the, particularly, and, I imagine not just New York, but around the country that you’ve done places that people would recognize or would be able to go past and have a look at.

So tell me a little bit about some of those things that you’ve been involved with that you’re perhaps most proud of.

It run, it runs the gamut. I’ve been involved in museums design houses skyscrapers, I like to say I’ve done everything from the tallest buildings in the world to the smallest bathrooms in the world.

And everything in between. And in New York all over Europe, middle East, south America, not Australia. Funny but just about everywhere else. In Asia I’ve done a lot. So having that kind of broad cultural perspective. Is also something that I feel is I’ve learned over the years and continue to be fascinated about is trying to understand the differences in culture and the context with where, where I put these buildings.

Yeah, I think it’s actually quite interesting, isn’t it? Because culturally there’s a difference in how we use space and how we perceive the need for space, isn’t it? It’s and that can happen based on whether you’re in the city or outside of the city, but also, the, the volume of the population in any given city and the expectations.

You walk into an apartment. In different parts of the world and they will feel quite different.

And they have different expectations depending on how they live. A lot of Asian sort of residential work involves multiple kitchens different kitchens as well as, open air kitchens and enclosed kitchens, depending on what it is they’re cooking.

Just as an example also. A difference in terms of the family structure, extended families versus nuclear family. So all of these factors, which, it’s not unlike if you’re doing any kind of strategic analysis for business understanding who your customers are.

Our customers are both the client but also the people who are gonna occupy those spaces that we want.

And that’s a really interesting concept because it’s how do you actually get out of the way? And I ask this because, it’s a common problem with a lot of businesses, right?

Because you would come in as a, firstly, as a, as an architect designer, where you can imagine certain things and there’s a vision and there’d be stuff that you have always wanted to do and to try, and you think this would be the ideal space for it mixed in with. What is the vision that the client has mixed in?

What is the end user going to have, and how do you actually balance those three very different audiences?

I’m an, first of all, I’m an avid learner and an avid traveler. And so I, a lot of our architects when they travel, they go and look at architecture. I go and look at people, I like look at how they, what?

What motivates them, how they communicate, how they interact in cities or in the country. And I like to say to my clients and anybody who wants to listen to me that I, every project I start with a blank sheet of paper. Of course I bring to it, my experiences and everything else I’ve learned, but I think it really helped brain.

Our thinking, and I say to, to my team, again, team involves hundreds of people. But I challenged the team to think, start with a blank seat of paper as if they’ve never done it before in their lives. And it yields incredible results. Because you’re right from the very beginning, you’re having to not quite make it up as you go along, but you’re challenged to start from a place of humility, first of all, which I think is important, but also one of just candor. And I encourage anybody I work with, that there’s no wrong answer. There’s no right or wrong way to do anything.

But we’ll discover ultimately what that story is. And so it tends to be. Contrary to what many people believe about my profession. It’s a very collaborative enterprise

and I think that’s something a lot of businesses can learn from because you actually alluded to something in there as well.

That’s really an important step in between those three audiences is you have team and you have a large team. So how do you actually convey a vision? Is a shared vision initially between yourself and the client to a team who can then carry it forward. Because that’s a typical problem in any business, is sharing a vision and actually carrying that vision through.

And just as there’s we start every project with a clean sheet of paper. We start every project exploring different ways in which we can. Tell that story and begin to shape that story. Sometimes it’s sitting around sketchings, sometimes it’s just sitting around and discussing.

And usually it’s a combination of multiple tools. And I’ve been an early adopter of using technology, advanced technology to realize that there are ideas. So now fortunately, we have the ability to quickly go from a sketch to almost reality. We virtually within seconds whereas it used to take us days if not weeks and months, to get anything close to being able to convey in a even semi realistic manner so that our clients can understand.

And get that feedback. So it’s, the world has changed dramatically. And now to ai even more

it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because that whole kind of adage of try before you buy scenario, which, you could take a car for a test drive, you could, there’s lots of things that you can do.

Sometimes there are samples that you can have for for people’s work if it’s a more of a service based. But when it comes to your profession where there’s, a significant investment and a significant period of time before that’s imagined. Being able to do that, allowing people to be in a virtual version of a space to fully understand it is huge.

And it, I imagine it helps narrow down some of the problem areas that people might encounter.

Yeah it’s it is a perennial challenge, let’s put it that way. And in terms of what how we are able to. Convey. And I’d say it, it’s really a trust building exercise as much as anything, sometimes it’s our profession’s bewildering to people and I’m, I am I guess I’ve really dedicated most of my career to simplifying that and speaking in plain language so that anybody can understand.

I really, avoid jargon as much as possible. And just like anything, people understand in different ways and it’s my job to help them overcome those hurdles and whatever tools I have available. Worsely, I have even more tools these days. It’s time well spent and and because of.

Because the, what we’re trying to do here, as you said, there’s a lot of risk involved and I’m in the risk mitigating business. I, I want before people pay enormous amounts of money in order to build something. I’d like to think that we have worked through most of the problems we’re likely to counter way ahead time through a kind of digital simulation or even.

Just an emotional connection. So that there’s confidence that we’re going to, we always run into problems. There’s no job I’ve ever been involved with, or there aren’t gonna be problems. What you want are the right people who can solve those problems in the right way and early enough in the process.

So instead of costing millions of dollars, it might just cost thousands of dollars.

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We’re going to, we always run into problems. There’s no job I’ve ever been involved with whether there aren’t gonna be problems. What you want are the right people who can solve those problems in the right way and early enough in the process.

So instead of costing millions of dollars, it might just cost thousands of dollars.

And I think that’s the interesting thing too, isn’t it? That the, I imagine that people that are working with you, that as your clients, there are many of them that would have zero experience as far as. A building project is concerned.

So understanding those little things. I, personally on a much smaller scale than what you build in, we’re in the process of completing a house. And here’s a fascinating little problem that we, I love houses for you. I love how, sorry.

I think houses are it, they’re really almost essential in what we do.

Because it, nothing is more. Other than your marriage or your life or nothing is more intimate if you think about it than your house. And you, everybody has their own way they wanna live, and it’s my job to help you achieve that goal.

And it’s interesting too because with the amount of tools that are available and the things that you can do, some of the little problems shouldn’t occur.

And I think that’s one of the interesting little sidelight for us. We have a walk-in pantry and we have shelves that were put into that pantry, but nobody thought about how you actually get the fridge, which is supposed to be in that pantry as well in, and now we’ve got shelves and we’ve got a space for the fridge, but no way of actually getting the fridge in there.

And. And, but these are the things that, you know, as you as and I, not asking you to solve that problem. We know how to solve it, but it’s more that, these are the little things that can happen whereby if you don’t have a, have some sort of vision for it. All we had was a flap drawing of a, rectangular space and it’d be nice to have some shelves here.

So that looked good, but nobody actually went. How do you. Navigate and utilize that space properly. And I think that’s where, technology and bringing that into into your business has a huge value.

It’s funny you should say that. It was one of the first real world problems I had as a young architect.

We designed this luxury Park Avenue penthouse apartments. And the client had wanted this particular piece of furniture. And we specified the furniture, we did all this stuff. We built the apartment, and then we realized we couldn’t get it through the front door. And you have to experience that once we ended up having a hoisted on the outside, which actually is very common in New York City, that’s how they get a lot of piano or books in apartments.

But yeah, you just have to experience that kind of thing once and you go, oh, you know what, no. You really have to swallow everything through it. It, there’s a lot of detail involved in that. And I am a very stickler for detail as most of my clients are. And we’re spending that kind of money and you’re working that hard at something.

You, you don’t wanna make a, what would I call a rookie mistake, right from the beginning.

And it’s interesting that you say that because again I, I want this to, for people listening out there that this isn’t just about architecture. This is about, business and how we operate.

And paying attention to those details can make all of the difference because it’s easy as well to, for a client to assume that you’ll be on top of something and it’s easy for you to assume that a client will know this. And that’s often how the mistakes happen, right?

Yeah. You have to as the leader, I, my job is not just to communicate to the client and understand what their needs and desires are but also I have to communicate to my team effectively and make sure that the same diligence that I am responsible for and I’m communicating, that client gets transferred to every member on the team.

So that you’re always building in sort of checks and balances and instilling in everybody a sense of quality.

Let me ask you how you do that as well. And there are other areas I wanna explore, but I’m really fascinated by that process of working with the team and conveying messages because we actually had a recent episode of Biz Bias.

We were talking to a couple of fighter pilots. And that sort of precision communication and debriefing is a huge element of what they do, and it’s what they’re trying to teach businesses. So I’m actually fascinated about how you do that. How do you actually convey not just the vision that we talked about, but then the preciseness of the detail that needs to happen to that, to a team that gets passed down the line, right?

Because. I imagine you don’t, do you talk to everybody who’s gonna be involved in One Go? Is it a step-by-step process? How do you manage that?

Yeah, because it’s not just architects that I’m involved with. I’m involved with engineers. I’m involved with in some cases with landscape architects a whole range of consultants and you have to.

It helps having worked with different teams before. So you build in that trust, it all starts with you. If you’re leading by example and you’re a conveying the accordance of being diligent at the same time, we run very tight deadlines and we have to have firm deliverables, so you can’t miss deadlines.

But at the same time, you wanna try and minimize mistakes. So that’s continues to be a challenge that will continue to be a challenge. I do think AI can help with that. I think the problem with AI is that I see in this, especially in younger architects that I work with, they, and they’re too willing to trust ai.

It’s almost. Too much of a shortcut and AI doesn’t really work unless someone is checking it. And I worry that my generation isn’t gonna be around that much longer. And so I have some concerns about, how do we instill that into our agents or AI agents and making sure that I suppose we’ll develop agents.

Who check other agents and somehow that’s gonna work itself through the system. But I would never want to take the human factor out of it for, at the end of the day there has to be judgment in that. And a good judgment doesn’t nearly tongue from knowing the right answer. It comes from understanding what the problem is.

I think, and not only that, you are very much in a creative space and an AI can only base things on what it knows and to, there’s a huge extent of where, a human being’s ability to take things that it may have seen and create something new. Imagine something completely different is uniquely human.

Yeah. I, the challenge that our profession has is that even if you, if Iactually were to show you images of architects working in, say, the 1950 on these kinds of projects that I’m involved, book tends to be large, say, hotels or around the world. You know that, and you would see a sea of.

Desks and people drafting over the desks, these sort of giant, drawings, maybe two or three people working on ’em, drawing at once. And you would think that with the advances in technology, we wouldn’t see that and image anymore, but we still do. We still have, big offices filled with people sitting at computer.

I do think the one area where AI can change that. I do believe AI offers the ability to do more with less. And that’s that kind of efficiency I think is ultimately for the good of the industry and and the good of these complex building projects that we’re gonna continue to have to do especially if we’re trying to also solve climate issues.

And, as, as well as bridging the sort of vast cultural divide that still suffers.

I wanna come back to the climate and sustainability part of things, but I just wanted to ask you as well, ’cause I’m fascinated by this view. I dunno what the psychology is, but I know certainly when I pick up a pen.

And I write something down, it has a different impact to me typing it. And particularly when I’m trying to be creative. Often it needs the pen. There’s something magic that happens with that. I don’t know if it’s the same in your profession, but how do now with the technology that you’ve got, is that, pen to, is it more now pen to track pad than it is pen to paper?

In order to get that same impact, because, I gather that’s the thing, right? If we, if, if we pick up a pen and you try and draw a straight line on your own it, it can be reasonable, but it’s not gonna be as straight as using a ruler and marking that up.

But, the great thing about doing that, just in simple applications, if you’ve got a electronic pen and you draw that straight line, it will straighten it for you, right? So is that process of using the technology in that way, is that the second step? Is that the, like, where do you balance that from the old fashioned, as you were saying, scribbling on a bit of paper to, utilizing the technology and bringing that in?

That, that’s a really great question and I think it’s I go back to the collaborative part of what we do. Yeah, people. And this has become let me put it this way. When I was first learning how to be an architect, even this was before computers the skills that you learn were at sitting at your drafting table, drawing by hand, a letter in by hand.

And it was very almost a social activity because people were constantly going by your desk. Stopping by looking at what you’re doing, and you’d have a conversation about that. Increasingly, as we move towards computers, you had to formalize that into essentially gathering people within needing spaces and projecting either pinning drawings up, projecting digital images on a screen.

But still, you’d have to, you would the most valuable part of it was. Essentially conversing and critiquing, and challenging each other about, what it is that you’re seeing and how you to make it better.

Yeah. It’s I love how you are blending technology into what you are doing, and I think this is a perfect example for businesses where there it is a blend.

It’s not taking over there, there won’t be. A a situation in the future where you can walk up to a, an AI and say, build me a house and it’ll design the house asking a few questions. It’s not going to be the same. That’s not something that I imagine is really a proper vision for what your profession.

I do. I, this is where I’d say I’m a big advocate on the future of the ai. Because one of the things I’ve been very concerned about within my profession is that we’ve drifted to over to specialization. It used to be that architects were kind of generalists. They basic they would look at the human condition and they would offer, a vision of the future.

And then everything would fall into place around that. Increasingly we’ve seen people overly specialize in particular areas and we’ve lost sight of the sort of generalist part of what we do. And I think ai, it flips that entire script because, and as you said, it’s not gonna ever really be good in terms of full throttle.

Creativity, it’s always gonna be a little off in some way. And it’s gonna need to be corrected, of course corrected, whether it, that’s just in, in terms of prompts. But I imagine you’ll be able to essentially work with ai. I’m using this AI a lot right now in terms of early envisioning of projects.

But what? Highly critical line that I’ve developed over years of a very successful career.

Yeah and I imagine it’s going to help problem solve when you’ve got the creativity so that if you’ve looking at and say, I want to do X and you are not quite seeing how the solution might be, the AI might be able to draw upon its knowledge to help give you a solution to it, but its solution to a creative problem.

That is the differentiator.

Yeah. It will. But I think it’s still gonna be a sort of adjunct to through human interaction. And there’s this, there’s nothing wrong. I am concerned about how we’re gonna train architects. That’s a whole nother, problem without some background in just.

Sketching and collaborating the way that I was talking about. But I do think that the ability as we’re doing right now to treat the world and AI is gonna help accelerate that, where, I can have, and I do this right now, I have people working all over the place on projects.

My main project right now, which is. These wilderness hotels and resorts. I had people working all over the world at 24 hours a day. We’re able to communicate just as you and I are communicating right now.

I wanna talk about that because you said in the beginning you started a, architecture, but now it’s pivoting a little bit more on the business.

So tell me a little bit more about that process of pivoting and what that focus is now.

I, i’ve always worked a lot in real estate. The projects I’ve done in New York City involve skyscrapers to abilities a com, very complex projects, multi-family.

Some of them are what we call adaptive reuse, taking existing older buildings and transforming them into something new. And, yeah. That process is yeah, essentially it’s it requires a certain

ability to kind, I hate to use this term, but I’ll use it here ’cause I it’s thinking outside of the box and then trying to find ways to get other people. To respond to that. And it and sometimes it happens, like that it’s highly creative sort of spark.

Sometimes you have to really go through many different steps saying many iterations before you get the right answer.

Yeah. It’s and, bringing that into. A new way of thinking as well. I think, when you start talking about sustainability and the, and climate change, there’s a degree to which, there’s a communal acceptance of these things, but there’s a whole difference in actually being, wanting to implement and and what the consequences of doing that are in terms of, it’s often more costly.

It’s often compromising a little bit on what you can and can’t do, whether it’s for financial reasons or because from a sustainability point of view, it’s better if you do this, whereas, visually you might have preferred to do that. So how do you actually balance that out for yourself and for your clients?

I’m also very practical too. And I have a history of trying to understand what our client, my client’s budget is what the, their pain points are in terms of their business and how I can accelerate that. And sometimes it means spending a little more, and sometimes it means, just we have to, adjust our thinking in order to fit the budget.

I don’t think it’s I find that the sort of conversations with about architects not caring about how much things cost. You’re not dealing with the right architects. Because if you don’t understand the business side of what we do you’re not really fully engaging all aspects.

But one is a very costly.

Yeah, I think that’s the interesting thing, isn’t it, about the space that you’re in. It is extremely costly when you start talking about larger scale buildings. But it’s all relative, isn’t it? Even when you’re building a house and it’s for a it’s, that is a relatively large expense for an individual.

So it, it’s keeping that in mind and reigning in what you might want to do and what you can do. That’s a, an interesting challenge.

Yeah, it is. I think, unfortunately there have been we’ve inherited our sort of legal process is developed over years and years. It’s almost a 19th century model of how we go about from design to construction.

And that’s another aspect that I see. Starting to change where I like to, to, and the best projects I’ve worked on is the contractor doesn’t show up in the middle of the project. They’re at the beginning. Because they, those are the guys who have their ear to the ground.

They understand the kind of minute arbitrage of prices. And better than I do. We’re the best suppliers, what the best manufacturers, what the best materials are. So having their input early on in the process is key. It’s cre key to the creativity. I, I, the one thing I don’t like having to do is to, you got everybody excited.

We’re all about this idea. We love this design. You bring the contractor in, towards the end of, after you’ve done all the hard work and they come back and they go, you’re, 25% or 50% or a hundred percent over budget, and then you have to readjust. It’s far better to say, okay, this is what we’re doing.

This is, these are our limitations. Understanding what those limits are, and then trying to be creative within those limits. To me that’s what it’s about.

Yeah, talk to me a little bit about the niche that you’ve gotten into and how that came about, because it is again, a common business idea that everyone wants you to niche a little bit further for good reason. So how did you find this niche and how is it how’s that playing out for you?

The without giving too much away I can’t. Name names, but I during I think it was actually right before the pandemic I got called in as I often do on a project. This case was in the Middle East, huge hotel and resort in the middle of a desert and a, a.

Absolutely beautiful location, pristine. If you’ve ever been to the US it’s a lot like Northern Arizona or southern Utah. These incredible sandstone formations and mountains, flat tops, meses. And one of these the most absolutely gorgeous. Mountain laptops that they, and they wanted, the client wanted to put in a huge hotel to the point where it was just gonna be dominate everything.

And I remember I, they brought me in. They wanted know what I thought. And I said I think your hotel’s too big, for the site. We’re saying not and so I needless to say, I wasn’t on that project very long, but but I did like the idea, this was a very remote location that you was incredible destination.

So beautiful. And the idea of putting, making something, that was the ultimate in luxury and luxury I define in this case. Essentially switching off the sort of everything digital and really just going to a place that was serene and peaceful and quiet that you could engage nature without necessarily having to feel like you were rough.

This but and I essentially have been working on that project now for the past three years.

And I think that’s an interesting one, isn’t it? It’s how the journey of, being in business and it takes you somewhere that fascinates you and that ability then utilize that and start to specialize in that space.

And how do you it’s one thing to have the passion for it, but how do you actually find the right buyers for it? How do you actually find the right people that this is something that is a priority

for you? You, it’s fortunately there are examples is there of these types of hotels.

I think the, what’s interesting is that having now looked at them and understanding the business models you, there are problems with many of them. And those are the precise problems that I’ve looked at that it, essentially becomes our differentiator. I wouldn’t say what that is, but needless to say you, it does help to look at what the competition there is.

Look at the landscape, understand the trends and this is frankly, since I started till today, this is only accelerated. I think that and the one thing that is most interesting to me, and you can see this. The patterns of millennials and my kids are Zoomers, gen Z in their travel habits is they travel in groups.

And they, and that’s a different kind of travel. Then we’re used to. And and based on that, I think, yeah, this is what I’m true to doing. To focus on. Remote wilderness, but you’re together with your group.

I love that. Whole concept. I, couple of questions just to wrap things up, and one is just based on that, is what’s the future?

What does it look like? How is it changing? Because when you look at. The obvious architecture is one of those obvious things when you can look at something and say that was, Victorian and that was this, and that was that. So where is it going?

I think what’s interesting to me is that, that first of all, there’s I, there, there was a period there where it seemed like we completely forgot history.

And you know that is. That is something that I think we’re gonna, as a species I do think that one of the things that’s gonna happen here is that one, when everything becomes so immediate, when you can instantly get, what attention or whatever it is that you’re looking for the enduring qualities.

Buildings that had been there and preceded you through generations and cities that have that fabric still intact. I think people’s attitude towards that is gonna change dramatically. And I do believe that we’re entering a new era where we’re we’re for lots of reasons. Climate is one of them.

Tearing buildings down does do a lot of damage to a greenhouse gas emissions. And the this adaptive reviews mentality of taking old buildings and repurposing them, whether they’re even, in New York, we’ve just opened up the plug gates here with, set buildings that were office buildings that were designed in the sixties and seventies. Were developers are rapidly turning those over into apartments. I, I believe the same thing’s happening in I, I know Sydney, it’s happening in Melbourne. We’re you’ve got this building stock already.

And what do you do with it? If nobody wants to work there anymore, turn them into what people need, which is housing.

I love that. The repurposing thing, it cast me back a little bit earlier on. The first apartment that I bought was a squash court before, and now they converted the squash courts into a.

But people thinking out there going, isn’t that small? And you go, no, actually a squash cord is a, I think it’s about 64, 65 square meters, which is, and it’s, obviously height wise they’re able to put extra extra floors in. But from a space point of view, it’s actually, it was actually quite a large apartment.

I do have to tell you that when I when I first moved in there and I had a had a party for all of my friends to come along, they all thought it was quite amusing to bring the Gatorade along and to to come dressed and squash here. Yeah. But I just to wrap things up, we could talk for a long time because it’s such a fascinating space, but the question that I like to ask all of my guests is what’s the aha moment that clients have when they start coming to.

To work with you that you wish more people knew they were gonna have in advance.

I’m a lot of fun to work with, that’s that I’ve, I’d focused on people. And I’m fascinated by people’s stories. And but you’re going to spend that kind of money and that kind of time. It’s a great deal of time.

Work with people you like work. That’s, it’s really, it really boils down to that at the end of the day. Ideally, they’re qualified to do the job, but so much is lost when you don’t have that sort of rapport, that kind of communication. It’s who wants to spend and it’s gonna be a painful experience.

I, I. I never sugar sugarcoat this. You’re probably, they experienced that on several, deer house. It always is painful, if you ever have the right people behind it takes a little bit of that pain away. At the end of the day, you look back on and say, that was a, interesting thing to do.

And hopefully it turns out even better than you and Matt.

I love that there’ve been so many valuable lessons for businesses of all type to learn from this, but as well, we glossed over it a little bit, but you have won a stack of awards. There are some amazing buildings that you’ve you’ve built I’ve, scrolled through your website and seen lots of interesting things.

We will include all the links in the show notes for anyone listening in. Who wants to check out all of those different things that you’ve done, but thank you so much for sharing those amazing insights and here’s to many more big projects to come.

Thank you, Anthony. It’s I enjoyed this conversation very much.

And I

I appreciate your insight and to everyone listening in. Of course, don’t forget to subscribe and we look forward to your company on the next episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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