Navigating Our 100+ Episodes: A Guide to Discovering Hidden Gems | 119

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We've released over 100 episodes now, so if you're

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new to the show, that is a lot of content to wade through.

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So in this episode, I cover how to quickly filter through all of our episodes to

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find the content that you really need.

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I shine the spotlight on our business strategy and growth themed

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episodes, And I uncover a hidden gem that you might have missed

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and stick around to the end where I'll share one of my personal favorites.

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Welcome to Architecture Business Club, the show that helps you build

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a better business in architecture so you can enjoy more freedom,

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flexibility, and fulfillment.

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I'm John Clayton, and if you're joining us for the first time, don't forget

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to subscribe or hit that follow button so you never miss another episode.

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we've got over 100 episodes now.

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I think we we're approaching 120 at the time of recording this one.

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And nearly all of those episodes are all still relevant and really

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useful, but I think it can be difficult to know where to start.

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It may be overwhelming, particularly if you are new to the show.

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If you've recently discovered the show.

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That can be a lot when you've got quite a big back catalog and often it

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you can end up kind of defaulting to just checking out the recent episodes,

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which I, I totally understand.

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But from my point of view, there are some fantastic episodes that

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we've, um, we've made that just make it overlooks just because they

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weren't, they weren't made recently.

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To fix this problem, we've added episode categories to our website.

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So if you head over to architecture business club.com, you'll find it

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much, much easier to filter through our back catalog of episodes so

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that you can find the episodes that are most relevant for you.

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So, just to give you a quick overview of those categories, I'm not gonna go into

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all the categories in detail because, um, I think we've, we've got around

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a, a dozen or so different categories.

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'cause as I, as I mentioned earlier, we've, we've released

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a lot of episodes now.

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Um, but just to give you a brief flavor of, of the types of themes

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that we cover on this show.

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We have got category on business strategy and growth marketing and lead generation.

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Personal brand and visibility.

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Sales, pricing and getting paid systems, tools and automations,

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mindset, wellbeing and resilience.

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Career paths and practice journeys.

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Content PR and podcasting industry events and the bigger picture

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community and the podcast.

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And last but not least, team outsourcing and collaboration.

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Wow.

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Um, this was interesting exercise for me actually, because when you produce in.

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Content regularly, and you produce that kind of volume of it, sometimes you can

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forget the, the work that you've done.

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And, um, going back and looking at some of those old episodes and

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then trying to categorize it, come up with those kind of different

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categories to segment everything, make it a bit more accessible for you.

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It really made me realize what a valuable back catalog we've got here and made

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me want to, to shine the spotlight on, on some of those past episodes and kind

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of bring them back to life, really.

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Um, mainly because I feel that there's a lot of content there that's gonna

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be extremely useful for you, that you just may not have discovered.

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So I thought that now, and then what I would do is I would shine the

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spotlight on one of those categories just to give you a flavor of some of

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the content that's there and let you know what you might be missing out on.

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So let's start with.

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Business strategy and growth.

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So this category is really all about practical thinking so that

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you can run a better business.

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So it's really about giving you some of the, the foundations that you need.

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So in that category, our most downloaded episode to date is.

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Launch your way to success, no more feast and famine, with Sigrun.

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This was a great episode.

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So in this episode, I'm joined by Sigrun.

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So it's an interview episode.

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Sigrun is an award-winning business coach, bestselling author, and entrepreneur,

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who explains how to use launches as part of your marketing strategy so that you

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can escape that feast and famine cycle that a lot of service-based business

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owners find themselves stuck in.

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So this episode would be great for you if you sell the same service

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all year round and you want to learn how to create some genuine urgency.

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For people to buy from you, which often, that can be really difficult when you have

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something like architectural services.

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Maybe you, you have the same, um, service offering round, round, the whole year.

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It can be tricky to think, well, how do we kind of create this sense of urgency there

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when it's like an always available service and it is the same thing year round.

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Sigrun helps you with all of that in this episode.

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Here's a quick clip.

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A launch is a marketing campaign, where do you create excitement

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for the product or the service?

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Ideally ahead of time so that when it's available for purchase that they

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can make a lot of sales in less time.

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And this is what people do in online business.

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Uh, we use launches to sell programs, online programs, online courses,

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uh, anything we sell really.

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Because if you don't launch, you know, if something is available

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all the time and you don't announce to people what's special about it,

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or there's no limited edition or, or there's no sense of urgency.

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Well, then you're going to think to yourself, I can buy it tomorrow.

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I can buy it next week.

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I can buy it next year.

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And you forget about it.

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You don't buy it.

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I also wanted to highlight a hidden gem that you might have missed.

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Um, so I'm gonna pick one from this particular episode category

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of business strategy and growth.

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Um, the episode that I've picked is navigating your Business

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Journey with quarterly Planning.

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This was episode 13, maybe unlucky 13.

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I don't feel it's had perhaps that the love that, um, it deserved.

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It is a really practical episode.

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In this episode I talk about strategic business planning.

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Okay, so maybe, maybe not the most exciting sounding topic,

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but this is really useful.

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And it talks about, um, how to break your year down into quarterly chunks

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so that you can better plan your business activities for the year.

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You can make easier course corrections and.

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You can see some real results in your business over a more manageable 90 day

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period rather than, you know, like one of those long-term business plans, one year,

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three year, five year, that sort of thing.

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So this episode's gonna be great for you if you're feeling perhaps

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a bit rudderless, or maybe you just need some help to get

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started with business planning.

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Here's a quick clip.

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Let's imagine you're planning a long journey.

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Let's say you are going to go on a road trip across Europe, which if you are.

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I'm very jealous.

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I'd love to do a road trip across Europe.

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It's a long while since my backpacking days.

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But that that's, uh, a story for another day.

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If you're planning a big road trip across Europe, it's much easier to plan

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a long journey like that in stages.

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That way you can focus on one stage at a time rather than the entire journey.

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And if circumstances change, it's easier to make a course correction

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for one stage of that journey than to replan the whole trip.

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So think of each quarter of the year as a stage or leg in your

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overall journey for this year.

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To get to that destination, that, that big goal that you've set for

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yourself and your business this year.

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90 days.

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It's it's a more manageable chunk of time to plan ahead.

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You likely to know what you've got going on over the next three months

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but probably don't know everything that's in store for your whole year.

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But it's also long enough to see some real results in your business from the efforts

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that you've made over the past 90 days.

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Now it is time for me to choose.

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My own favorite from this category of episodes.

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This, this is really tough.

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This is really tough to decide because we've got some amazing

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episodes in this category.

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I, I always enjoy my conversations with Brian McCartney from Archmark

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and, um, Ray Brown from ArchiBiz.

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I had a great early conversation with Kris Baxter from Studio

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11 Architecture, um, which was surprisingly touching that episode.

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But.

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I think my personal favorite from this particular category is 10 lessons

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from 10 years as a sole practitioner.

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So this was episode 17, so this was released quite some time ago,

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but in this episode, I share 10 key lessons from my own personal

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experiences as a sole practitioner.

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I talk about learning from my many mistakes, knowing your numbers,

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delegation, perfectionism, finding joy in your business, and the

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importance of connection and community.

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I honestly get a bit vulnerable about the challenges of running your own business.

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So this episode is very personal to me.

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And that's why I've chosen it as my favorite episode from that category.

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This episode's gonna be great for you if you're a sole practitioner,

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a freelancer, or if you're thinking about starting your own business, or

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if you've ever found yourself comparing yourself to others and thought they seem

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to be doing this far better than me.

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I would just say, don't worry about that, because despite appearances, many of the

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people are winging it and some of them honestly are gonna be a complete hot mess.

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Not that you'll, you'll see that from their social media feeds.

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So, um, yeah, go easy on yourself.

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Here's a quick clip.

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I'd love to tell you that everything worked out perfectly.

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That it's all been a roaring success.

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But in truth over the last 10 years as a sole practitioner, I've

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personally found it really hard.

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And made a lot of mistakes along the way.

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Like when I spent nearly a grand on brochure ads that led to zero leads.

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Or the time I rushed into outsourcing a drawing package for the

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provider's work to be total rubbish.

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Or the time I spent months planning a rebrand and a significant chunk

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of cash on a brand new website.

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Which with hindsight, was totally unnecessary at that time.

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Or when I took on a difficult client, even though my gut was telling me

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otherwise, Inevitably there were problems and I totally mishandled it.

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And then I got really stressed out trying to resolve them.

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Some mistakes have been big, some have been small.

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You will make mistakes running your business.

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So don't beat yourself up about it.

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Learn from your mistakes, fail fast and move on.

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So I hope you've enjoyed this whistle stop tour through some of our past

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episodes, and now that you know how to filter through the episodes

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more easily, remember, just head to architecturebusinessclub.com

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to be able to find all of our episodes and those episode categories so that you

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can filter through and find the content that best meets your needs right now.

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I may revisit another one of those categories in the future, um, and

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shine the spotlight on some other episodes that may have been overlooked.

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Alright, bye for now.