New Archibiz Course Available for ACA Members

Archibiz , 29 June 2020

Archibiz and the ACA Business of Small Practice (BoSP) are offering another “Designing Architectural Practice Success” course to ACA members, starting on Tuesday 28 July.

If someone were to ask you to show them your drawings for a five-bedroom house you recently built, it wouldn’t take long for you to produce the drawings. You’d likely know exactly where they were kept, how detailed they were and how they led you to your finished product.

What if someone were to ask you to show them your drawings for your business? Would you be able to access them with the same ease you did earlier?

Most businesses, not just architecture practices, struggle with creating a clear vision for where they want to be in the future. For architects, who already face a daunting set of uncertainties, a lack of vision could prove to be detrimental to their business.

A group of nine ACA members delved into this topic recently, during the early stages of Archibiz’s “Designing Architectural Practice Success” course. The eight-week program, led by Archibiz co-founder and business coach Ray Brown, is structured to help architects develop and accelerate their practices by teaching them the foundational areas of business. The nine professionals enrolled in the course are a couple of weeks away from completing the program, which kicked off on 21 April.

Throughout the 90-minute video conferencing call, Ray spoke about the importance of having “an energising view of the future” to the group. As architects, we have great ideas every day. It’s our job to transform these ideas into a reality we can deliver to our clients. Yet, Ray cautioned, none of these ideas will be successful if we don’t have a vision for our practice.

ACA member Cathy Harvey may have put it best: “Unless you know where you’re heading, how are you going to decide one step first against another step?”

Ray argued that the best way to figure out one’s destination is to reflect on where the business is now, and where you would like it to go next. It also needs to be specific. More importantly, we need people, such as employees, to be aligned with the vision.

ACA members undertaking the course face different challenges. Some are in the midst of creating a succession plan for a decades-long company, while others are in the budding stages of growing their start-ups. This presents a unique opportunity for architects to grow with and from their peers, observing how others may have dealt with obstacles they could soon face.

Vision is one of the many topics covered in Archibiz’s DAPS course. The eight-week program also covers finance, business development and marketing, structure, leadership and management. In addition to the eight video conferencing calls, the course also includes a 30-minute on-boarding call to discuss specific business goals, a 60-minute individual coaching call and a 65-page workbook with downloadable tools and templates.

The course is being offered to ACA members at the special price of $2,400+GST (usually $2,900+GST). Only 10 places are available for this exclusive ACA cohort. For more information or to register your interest in the next course, head to the Archibiz website.

Archibiz and BoSP

In 2019, ACA – WA Committee Member, Kate FitzGerald, was part of Archibiz’s pilot course and has since become a vocal advocate for the way it has transformed her business. Kate also champions the ACA’s Business of Small Practice (aka the ‘BoSP’) forum, which seeks to build the business acumen of small and emerging practices and is designed to foster a community of small practitioners around Australia.  

Kate often reflects that her journey as an emerging practice has sometimes been both lonely and confusing, and she co-founded the BoSP as a way of bringing practices together so they could feel energised and empowered through access to knowledge and shared experiences.

“Archibiz represents the kind of transparent and professional community-based learning that the BoSP embodies, and the second Archibiz course offered exclusively to our members is a welcome step towards connecting and empowering business leaders in small practices all around the country.”

 

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