Starting Your Own Architecture Practice with Ian Knowles | 030

If you've been used to earning a steady income

as an employee at an architect's practice, the idea of setting up

your own business in architecture.

Whilst exciting might also feel overwhelming and frankly, a bit scary.

So how did architecture designer Ian Knowles overcome his fears

to start his own practice?

And what preparation did he do to set up his architecture business?

That's exactly what we're going to be chatting about.

And this episode of architecture business club.

The weekly podcast for solo and small firm architecture practice owners,

just like you who want to build a profitable future proof architecture

business that fits around their life.

I'm the host, John Clayton.

And if you want a business in architecture that gives you more

freedom, flexibility, and fulfillment.

Then go to architecture, business club.com forward slash blueprint.

And download the architecture business blueprint.

It's the step-by-step formula to freedom for architects, architectural

technologists and architectural designers.

And it's absolutely free as a gift from me.

Now let's talk about Ian's experiences, setting up his

new business in architecture.

Ian Knowles is a Norfolk based architectural designer and the

director of Iconic Architecture.

With over 10 years in architecture and construction and a background

in architectural stonemasonry.

Iconic Architecture specializes in residential architecture from

unlocking space in existing homes to bespoke new build dwellings.

You can learn more about Ian at iconic architecture.

co.

uk.

Ian, welcome to Architecture Business Club.

Yeah.

Hi.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

You're very welcome.

I'm glad you could find the time to um, have a chat with me today.

Ian, tell me about how your home renovations going.

If you've got a 1930s property you've been working on for a while, haven't you?

it's a, it's a challenge.

It's, you know, I'm, I'm learning much more about certain

aspects of 1930s construction than I really probably want to.

But it's good.

It's good fun.

I've learned to hang doors and bits of plaster work and all sorts.

And yeah, learning that everything doesn't quite line up, uh, in an old property.

Certainly doesn't.

So it sounds like you're quite hands on with this project.

Yeah, well, I think, you know, I've got a background in, in

stonemasonry, so I've always got a kind of a, oh, I could probably do that, you know.

Yes, I can.

Sometimes it takes me an awful lot longer than I really want to.

One of the doors, uh, most of the doors were fine.

Because they're like 1930s, they open into the room.

I didn't really want that, because it kind of messes up the circulation.

So I flipped them, so they opened to get to the door.

Most of them were fine.

One of them is just not square.

The floor isn't, isn't level.

Then we put carpet in, I ended up taking off so much of this door and

it's, it's, it's fine now, but you know, half the door is, you know, in

the bin cause I've, you know, scraped or sawed or just kind of, yeah, botched

it into the existing door opening, but it works and it's, you know, it's good.

It reminds me of one one of the, the second property that we

bought as a family, it was a 1960s semi, and it needed everything doing to it.

It just, just reminds me of that.

And then I'll let you in the little secret if you didn't realize

already, but they are never finished.

Like you just get to the point where you think you've got it all done and then

you'll be, you'll be starting again.

So It's an ongoing, it's going to be an ongoing project, I suspect for some time.

We are going to talk about your recent experience is setting up your practice,

Iconic Architecture, so that anybody else that's thinking about setting up

their own architecture practice can benefit from your experience on this.

I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

I think it's going to be really interesting.

It can feel quite scary though, leaving a a salaried position

and starting a new practice.

So what was your biggest fear before going it alone?

From a lot of my career, I just didn't even think about it.

I just didn't think it was a thing I could do.

You know, it's kind of that, that fear of finding the clients, of

it working, all the pressure.

I think it's a mixture of those.

It's just, you know, it's the reality of running a business, finding the work is,

was probably my biggest fear, probably still is my biggest fear, but it's,

um, you know, the, the position of kind of agency about it now is different.

Got it.

Yeah.

I would imagine that's, that's probably one of the common fears that,

that most Practice owners have when they're first looking to start out.

Obviously there's a lot of practical stuff that needs to be done, but that

fear of, am I going to have enough work?

Where's the work going to come from?

That's something that a lot of people will have experienced that are

listening to this episode, I'm sure.

that's going to really resonate with people.

One thing that you did do though, um, in preparation, you did write a business

plan before you launched your business.

So could you tell me about.

What key elements that included and perhaps how that's helped so far.

It's a really important thing of stepping out of being kind of

an employee and thinking about, what your business wants to be, how you want to

do, how you want to run your business.

You know, lots of different sort of templates or methods to produce one,

but it really refines down what your business is, who you're compared to.

What are your key performance things you want to look at?

How do you want to market yourself?

And also really importantly, you're starting to look at the financial side.

what's your cash flow plan?

And that's that can be very different from your experience in practice.

Thinking about what your base rate for your finances are.

Suddenly it's not just how much you're getting paid.

It is.

Your software, your insurances, the downtime, everything's got to be factored

in for it to be a viable business.

I think that is a snapshot of it.

That's really interesting.

I recall that when I worked in practices previously, before I set

up my own business, that sometimes we'd, we'd see the, the rates.

Like our rate that we got charged out at, and it was usually multiple times

more than the wages that we received.

And, and it was always that thing of like, wow, they're charging

this much money for, for my time, I, should be getting paid more.

And probably was a bit of naivety there for most of us employees as

to you actually do need to charge.

I'm sure that in doing your business plan, you crunching those

numbers thinking, well, you've got to cover all those expenses.

You've got to allow for the fact that you aren't going to be fee earning a hundred

percent of your time while you're working.

So, yeah, it was, it's quite a sobering exercise.

Looking at those numbers for sure,

but very useful one.

There's a side of it as well.

It's like, as an employee, you might see your charge out rate or your hourly rate.

Yeah.

And there'll be a huge difference, but you know, the business cost is probably

somewhere between 2 for your salary.

So you know, instantly it's the distance between the two isn't that much.

And I'm keeping myself quite lean at the moment.

I'm working from home.

I'm doing a lot of the marketing and all those sorts of things myself, so

I'm not having those outlay costs.

But.

as a business grows and becomes more viable, you have to hand those kind

of hats off and start having a wider kind of system to, to do marketing and

do lead generation, do your website, otherwise your time, your valuable

time is split up too much that you can't run the business effectively.

So in that, the beginning when when you're

starting out, you've probably got more time than money available.

So it doesn't make sense to do a lot more of those tasks yourself, but as

your practice grows, then that time is you've only got a finite amount of it.

Whereas in theory, we can always earn more money.

So, that's sort of having that strategy about outsourcing or hiring.

Once more work comes in and you get more established is a good approach.

But yeah, I think a lot of people probably DIY pretty much

everything in the beginning.

And some of us probably DIY things for a bit too long and actually stifle the

growth of our businesses potentially.

We don't get taught how to run a business at architecture school.

So we could be forgiven for making a few mistakes along the way.

So it is important to fill those knowledge gaps.

And I feel that actually the responsibility is still on us to

fill those knowledge gaps on the business side of architecture, even

though we don't get taught it when we go to university or college.

So really interested to know how you filled those knowledge gaps.

Yeah, it's, it's so true.

Architectural.

You don't, you don't learn about the side of business.

A bit like kind of technical stuff.

You don't learn, but I've been fortunate that one of the practices

I work for gave me quite a lot of exposure to the financial side to

financing to doing fee proposals.

And that has kind of given me a good baseline to kind of

build off for my own practice.

I think.

you've got to look and explore how people are doing it.

One of those ways is, is doing a it's finding podcasts online and listening

to how other people do, like your one is really good and you've kind of got

some other business support systems in place to help people kind of have

a blueprint for what to do next.

There's a number of kind of architecture ones out there in the

field, but then also it's useful to look outside of your business.

At how other people run businesses, because there's, There's really important

ways that are really different ways you can approach the same problem.

I think that's probably my advice.

Absolutely.

So check out some of the resources that are available to us, um,

that are industry specific,

but don't limit yourself to just resources specifically for architects

or architecture practices, because there's actually some really valuable

stuff out there that's, um, whether it's kind of general business and

marketing advice or, or advice for other industries that's still transferable

and applicable to what we do.

I

Yeah.

Also, I'd mention that, you know, for me, I've There's a local schemes.

So there's government run schemes.

So for me locally, there's the VIPC and they run workshops, networking events.

They have like online courses.

And that has been useful to, to fill some gaps of that kind of research.

I found that speaking to people, even just picking up the, you know, reaching

out to people either in your network or in, you know, business people, you know.

speaking to them, do some research, then you go out and speak to some

people and they'll really help kind of put the jigsaw pieces together.

And you'd be surprised at how often people are open to just having a

coffee, you know, buying a coffee and they will, they'll have a chat with

you and it will be really valuable.

It will almost be more valuable than your research, but you should

also do your research so you can, you can ask the right questions.

I

most people are willing to help.

As you say, like if you've got an opportunity to get to some networking

events or you have an existing network of business connections, people that

are already running their own business, then absolutely, yeah, go meet them for

a coffee and ask them a few questions.

And I'm, most of them will be very glad to help out.

And the other point you mentioned, which we don't want to overlook

is, about the support through.

You know, regional schemes, I also benefited from quite a bit of free

support actually over the years.

I think when I moved back up in Lancashire, initially I contacted

a local agency for one of the councils, a business growth.

With the council and got a load of support to help write a business plan and, in

later years accessed hours and hours of training courses that in person training.

That was all paid for and covered through, um.

Well, actually, that one was the new Anglia growth hub, give them a shout out.

They'd had a lot of training courses available in East Anglia, but I'm sure

there's the equivalent to, you know, other areas across the country too.

Ian, you decided to set up as.

A limited company rather than a sole trader.

What, what led you to that decision?

think it's.

it's, it's kind

of a slightly more risk adverse option that the, your finances they're

more tied to the limited company than they are to you personally,

but working as a sole trader.

Also I had a conversation with one of my contacts, um, about kind of insurance.

It's, and his, his experience was going from a sole trader to a limited company.

He then had this, I wonder if, how do you How do you continue on your insurances?

Because they're tied to a different business entity.

So for me, it's, it's not a huge cost to run your own business.

Okay.

There are more kind of things, hoops to jump through, but it's, I think

it's a more viable long term option.

Especially if you've got, if you, if you want to be ambitious and kind of go for

a sustainable large business, I think it's the best option or larger business.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

I think when I decided to go limited, cause I actually did start out as a sole

trader many years ago and it was upon advice from my accountant, To go limited,

he was asking about the nature of the work and how secure the work was going to be.

Was it going to be repeating client work every month?

Or was it going to be kind of different projects and a

number of different clients?

And I think the sort of risk point of view, given the nature of the

work I was doing, it wasn't kind of repeat work that was regular.

We decided that limited was the way to go for that limited liability.

So I could totally understand why you've decided to make that choice now.

So, yeah, I think that's the right decision.

A new business.

I mean, it can be, it can be costly and income can be patchy at first.

Do you have any tips on financing a new business?

So from my own experience, it was a cold start business.

So I've, I've got, I've approached it.

I've sought out a startup loan and that has, that has helped me invest in some of

the initial startup costs of computers and marketing efforts and items around that.

Which you also need, you know, you need a business plan and a cash cut

cashflow plan to get that, that loan.

I had started some initial discussions to get some work in line.

But it ended up being more of a cold start than I was expecting.

It's first three to six months of a business are going to be difficult.

So if you can make some savings, you've got that.

You've got a significant reduction in your stress, but I would say, you

know, you've just got to, you've got to find some sort of financial model

and also have some plan B's and C's, you know, how are you going to finance

your life if, the money runs out.

You just have that in place that should certain things happen that you can

go, right, I'm, you know, this isn't working, I'm going to go do some part

time, or this isn't working, I'm going to work for a practice contract for

six months to build up to make sure that the bills are paid and you are

not driving yourself into the ground.

always going to be a struggle and everyone I speak to is like the start of a business

is always a struggle and you kind of got to aim for getting to about a year and

things will start mellowing, but yeah, it's probably not, I'm, I'm kind of

thinking three years is the time where things are like, okay, that's kind of,

of, it's,

it's now running.

It's now a business.

It's now, and it's now a thing.

I don't think there's, there's not kind of one solution.

It's just, you've got to kind of have a bit of faith in yourself

So one of the things that you mentioned there is there's the

opportunity for a startup loan to help.

Get things started so that you can invest in the equipment that you need

to be able to do your job and to get everything that you need to get started.

You mentioned again about your business plan that you've done

some financial forecasting.

So that sounds like another sensible thing that that people can do.

and.

You also mentioned about having some contingency plans, which

I think is a really good idea.

So having a plan B, you have your forecasts, but then you have a plan B,

maybe even there's the plan C, so that if things don't go quite as well as

expected with your, your forecast, that You've got some other options there.

So I think that's a really kind of sensible approach.

I think also what you mentioned, that idea of, maybe it not really being a

business for the first couple of years or so that, it's going to take you

maybe up to two, three years, to kind of get to where you want to get to.

And that's refreshing because I think sometimes we sort of think.

right, I'm in business now.

I'm going to like, the work's just going to start coming in and it's

going to be happy days and all of that.

And it can take a little bit of time to get going and get established.

It's having some realistic targets and realistic goals to work towards and

just making sure that you're focusing on just making some steady progress.

So that's it's been really interesting to hear.

To hear what you've been doing now.

There's, many different skills that are needed to set up and run a business.

Particularly if you're doing this on your own, as most people perhaps will

do when they're starting out, unless it's a partnership business, but a

lot of people are starting out as like sole practitioners in the industry.

How did you decide what to do yourself?

And.

What to outsource

I've, I've done a lot myself, to be honest, I've decided

to, at this moment, my, my time is, you know, is free essentially.

which

which I can reduce costs.

Well, I can just go, right, this time is down to marketing or this time is,

this is just, I can assign that in my head because otherwise it's just a

pure cost and I don't have, not, it's not, you know, the business kind of

of cashflow security to start outsourcing things to kind of have that responsibility

of now I have to pay that bill.

The job's been done, but, it's if the money's not there, the money's not there.

So I've kept it really lean and it's leaner than probably I'd want to be, but

you know, there's, there's kind of a plan in place that, as things start becoming

more secure, the cashflow in the pipeline builds, then I will start seeking out

the next stage to take those hats off me.

So it frees up my time to be the value add, which is, where

I'm going to add most value.

And then I'm going to end up reaping the rewards in the long term for that.

I'm not gonna burn myself out either, which is the other potential danger.

So, what's the

sounds like a very sensible approach.

Have you given some consideration to some of the, the first tasks or

responsibilities or roles within your business that you would like to delegate?

Are there certain things already in the first sort of month or so

that you're thinking, Oh, you know what, I know I've got to do this,

but it's not filling me with joy.

Are there any things in particular that you're sort of thinking it'd be

the first to outsource in the future?

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Now, back to the show.

I think accountancy,

Accountance is is a, you know, I've shifted it probably to an end of year cost

rather than to a monthly reduced cost.

And I think that's going to be one of my initial ones that I'm just

going to have to take a hit on.

And it's, whether that happens mid year or the end of the year, cause

it's not a, it's not a skill and there's lots of value and stress

that can be taken away from that.

Cause that is the one that'd be one of the biggest things,

especially at the end of year.

That's good.

negatively impact my business and potentially going to cost me more

than it costs employing them.

So it's an easy win that one.

I would agree with that one.

I actually.

When I started out in practice, the very well, one of the very first things that

was outsourced to somebody else was like the accounting I did bookkeeping in house,

but I paid for a cloud based accounting software on a monthly subscription.

So I did do that myself.

But we're using a really easy to use online platform.

But the actual, sorting out the company accounts, tax returns, all of that stuff,

I outsourced all of that from day one, because I was just like, this is just

not my area of expertise and I was just.

Would have been so worried about getting something wrong.

that I just thought that's just one thing that I'm just happy to pay for

because I didn't want the stress.

Yeah, like you, I've already, I'm already using an online platform or

you're using a platform that is, yeah.

And it's, it's kind of putting the processes in place Cause if you don't

put them in now, when it's life is maybe stressful, but easier that as soon as

life becomes harder and stressful, you, these, you know, your habits will slip.

I think definitely that way they're going to be worth, worth, worth investing in.

And then after that, I'm really, I don't know how the business is going to grow.

It's going to be a shift of what's costing me more than is returning the benefit.

So that is potentially admin kind of lead generation elements and kind of

project management and whether or not that is more of a project management

system where it just means that I'm only inputting the data once.

So I'm not using spreadsheets here and, you know, you're trying to track

dates really like, have I done that?

I can see kind of value payback on that, reducing that time.

I'm going to have to see how, how everything else grows.

Websites, kind of social media elements.

It's kind of things that in the future will be easier to take that

half and hand to someone else.

Cause so many of these things, you need the consistency, you need someone

working on it week by week to maintain the kind of your, your brand image

or, whatever KPI you want for it.

You need that consistency and that effort.

And it's, that time is quickly going to get absorbed with doing, doing

the job and putting in the work.

Absolutely.

I think something just worth mentioning actually is before

you, before you outsource or hire.

Is to always just go back to that task list, all those different roles and

responsibilities that you have within your business, and then playing devil's

advocate and just questioning whether everything's absolutely essential or not.

And then go through like a process of.

Elimination, getting rid of some of the things that maybe aren't serving your

business because things can change.

There can be something that feels like it's working for some time

and then, you know, six months down the line, you're still doing it and

not getting the results from it.

So there can be things you can just stop doing altogether.

And then I think automation, you mentioned that about, you know, project management

system, automate before delegates.

And then the sort of delegation and high outsourcing or hiring.

That should be the kind of last option after you've gone through that exercise.

You know, you've got, you've got time to figure all that out

cause it's still early days yet.

We'll talk a little bit about your area of specialism, your niche.

So your, your specialism is it's residential architecture and you plan to

expand into retrofit and sustainability.

Let's say.

Tell me a little bit about, those areas and.

Also, what, why do you think it's important to have a

specialism in the first place?

Because it could have just been like general architecture.

We do everything.

So why, why hone in on those particular specialisms?

Architecture isn't, I won't say crowded market, but once you do

your business plan, you'll look at your competitors and you'll look at, there's,

there's kind of tiers of competitors.

There's the sole traders, there's, you know, you've got, architects,

technologists, you've got one man bands, you've got small companies.

You might get some companies up to kind of 10, you know, locally,

most of them aren't that big.

There's a couple of bigger players, but they also work across the country.

And how are you going to differentiate yourself in the market?

How are you going to build a kind of brand about what you

do that people can remember?

Like, oh, that subject comes up, you know.

one of them could be for me, it's like retrofit.

I think it's a really interesting subject.

I think it's going to be a growing market.

You see the numbers about the existing dwellings we've got and the ones that

aren't, achieving a good level of comfort and energy efficiency, then there's,

there's going to have, you know, that market is hopefully going to grow.

And I can see a lot of opportunities and projects that I've worked on where

those conversations haven't happened.

They haven't happened early enough.

You know, you kind of got to go around to a project and go like,

what do you want to achieve?

How, how are you living in this?

Is there anything that you, you don't like and you can improve that.

And that's kind of the comfort key and the energy efficiency key kind of come in.

You know, one, you might be spending an awful lot of money on heating your house,

but also if your house is getting boiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in

the winter, you're not enjoying that space and your house is one, if not the

biggest investment you make in your life.

You sometimes have opportunities to, whether you're renovating it or

you're putting an extension on, then maybe that's an opportunity at that

moment to go, let's sort it out.

So that's kind of why I'm kind of going down the specialism route.

I think residential architecture, it's, especially as a small single

practice, it's, I'm not going to be able to compete with larger practices.

on commercial builds because it's a different business

to business interaction.

Really.

I think, I could do the work, but that's not really the way I don't

think that's the really way the majority of businesses really function.

So you're going to be fighting in a different market.

And it also means that I can have a clearer focus on who I want to talk to.

And how I speak to people about who I want to talk to, you know, there's kind

of the elevator pitch side where when you go to a networking event, when you

explain your business, you don't want to be giving them a five minute conversation

about all the skills you can do.

You want to be giving them a snappy thing saying, you know, I help people with

residential architecture and, you know, if it's an existing building, I can help them

with retrofit rather than, I've worked across, education projects, enthusiastical

projects, conservation, all very different needs, all very different clients, kind

of useful skills, but it's not a, it's not an easy sales package, I would say.

That's a good point.

There's a few, there's a few things that you mentioned there.

So having a specialism makes it easier.

To hone in on your messaging with your elevator pitch, makes it

easier to be able to package up your services in a way that makes sense.

Also, you mentioned this.

practical point there with just the size of the practice that has a small

practice starting out that, You know,

it

wouldn't make sense to be pitching for like a skyscraper or a new hospital.

So obviously those smaller size projects make sense in the first instance.

And the other thing you mentioned was about being a growing market for that

and I think that's something that I, I think we could all agree on that, that,

given the state of Britain's housing stock and housing crisis and climate change,

and all of those factors that it would seem that that's only going to grow.

I think that it's just,

going to continue to grow.

This probably needs to be a little bit more awareness, with the general public

that might be considering perhaps a.

regular home extension project or renovation that might not be aware of

the opportunity that they have with that property, to really improve its

energy efficiency and comfort, by going for a more of a retrofit project.

So, we probably as architects and architectural technologists have

a responsibility to educate the general public on that, because

if we don't educate them on it, nobody else is going to do it.

I think you've got some really interesting specialisms there.

Ian, I also wanted to ask about getting clients, essentially.

I know this is early days for you, but could you perhaps tell me how,

how you got your, your first clients or if you've got any recommendations

for us on, on getting clients.

I love

There's a mixture of approaches.

I think, if you've got the opportunity to try and leverage previous working

relationships as much as you can, because they're, they're people that are.

know,

have an understanding of your skill in the market.

And as a, as a new business, you don't have that kind of background, you know?

I think direct, direct interaction is, is your, is, is probably the key

is, you know, the majority of my main winning is through directly reaching

out to people and kind of entering into a conversation and having a chat with

them and keeping my foot in the door.

I'm doing a lot of other things around that in kind of long term preparation

or in, kind of business positioning and kind of business, they might have

a nice conversation and they look you up at least, you know, that's why the

website and social media is there.

Is it because it gives me the, kind of the social kind of brand, like

I'm, I'm, I'm a proper business.

I'm running a business.

it exists.

I'm trialing using, uh, online platforms like an online lead generation platform.

I'm giving it a go.

I've made a financial investment in it and it's, it's, it's, you know,

it's not generated any, uh, income as of yet, but it's generating

some leads that might go somewhere.

And you've also got to think about as a new business, take as

many opportunities as you can.

as early as you can, because you're refining your ability to win clients.

So even if you go to a, even if you don't win a project, the fact that you've gone

through the process of having a chat, chat, chat with a client, reflect on

that chat, think about why you may not have got that, you know, it might not

have been the right project for you, it might have been the right client, that's

fine, but kind of see, see the wins in also, or in the failures almost, so.

A lot of the things I'm approaching, it's just, you know, even networking,

it's, it's improving that elevator pitch.

It's kind of your ability to talk to people and kind of get them on side.

It's just got to take any opportunity, knock on as many doors,

I love that.

I love that.

take up, take every opportunity.

I like the knocking on doors.

The fact that you, you talked about the direct outreach as well.

I think sometimes in business, there's a tendency sometimes to do the things

that feel comfortable and easy when particularly it comes to lead generation.

And somebody may say, Oh, I don't understand.

that I've, I've.

I've been posting like every day on Instagram or Facebook or

LinkedIn for like the last three months and I've not got any.

Not got any leads out of it.

There's the thing that that type of stuff, it can help build some brand awareness.

But it can be quite difficult to get clients from that, particularly

if you don't have a really robust follow up posting on social

media and then engaging directly.

In conversation with them, either in the DMS or taking it to virtual

coffee or taking them out for a coffee, that sort of thing.

So, I think I liked the point that you made in about your existing network

as well, that if you've got existing connections, that if you're starting

out on your own to basically get over any kind of Pride that you might have

and, reach out to past employers, like the people that you've already worked

with that know you, they already know, like, and trust you, they've already had

experience of your work and expertise.

There's nothing wrong with doing a little bit of.

Subcontract work for a couple of other practices while you're

getting yourself better established.

And actually that can be depending on your niche or specialism.

If it's something where maybe your niche is something that you have a passion

for, but maybe on its own isn't Maybe not financially sustainable in your area, but

actually having that for your, the work that you're passionate about and then

supplementing it with something else, like some contract work can actually

make something viable that wasn't before.

It can actually become a sustainable business.

You can get a lot of repeat work that way as well.

Sometimes it can be might have a project that isn't a good fit for them and

they pass it straight on to you anyway.

So yeah, absolutely.

Leverage those connections.

Ian, if someone was thinking of setting up their own practice, I mean, is

there any sort of final recommendation you'd like to leave them with?

What would be the number one thing that you would recommend that they do

for thinking of setting up a practice?

To kind of go for it, I suppose.

There's only one way of doing it and it's kind of jopping in.

Life.

If you, if you, you feel like you're going to regret it,

you've just got to kind of do it.

Otherwise there'll always be, there'll always be a reason not to, there's

never going to be the right time.

And even if, even if it fails, don't be kind of, don't be scared of it failing

because you're not, as long as you understand or realize why it's not worked.

There's so many examples of successful business, business owners that have

failed, they really, the reason why they got to where they got was

because they, they happened to fail and they didn't let that stop them.

And they reflected on it and they changed what they did and it ended

up being something more successful.

I love that.

Yeah, there's, well documented that there's so many hugely successful

businesses that the business owners had multiple failed businesses prior to that.

But they learned from the failures and, applied, applied that.

It was just, I've just discovered another, another way that doesn't work.

So it's a success and then move on to the next one.

Ian, is there anything else you wanted to add that we haven't

covered in the conversation?

Just absorb as much as you can from anyone and try.

There's a lot of things on maybe like lead generation that you

can take with a pinch of salt.

I think, there's a lot of things about LinkedIn or Instagram lead generation

or ways to post and things like that.

And there's, there's a lot of people kind of selling kind of.

of,

You know, snake oil, um, I think out there and you've just got to find

your way and then see what works.

And I think probably your bit of advice, uh, which is fail fast,

just kind of constantly reflect and look, you know, if that's not

working, then you're a small business owner, you're in complete control.

Change it.

I love that.

Yeah.

I think, look at it like you're running a series of sort of short experiments.

just experimenting with a few different tactics to find the one that works and

you're absolutely right about There's so much out there for like lead generation,

particularly around like social media and running paid ads, that sort of thing.

And they do work for some businesses and they might work

for you, but they might not.

And that's the thing, you don't know just because it's worked for

one or the business, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to

work for you and your business, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't try it.

It's just recognizing that you might just need to give it a certain period of time.

to trial it out and then decide whether it's going to work or not moving forward.

That's really great advice.

So thanks for that Ian, for sharing your thoughts there.

There's just another question I'd like to ask.

It's the one I ask all of the guests.

I love to travel and to discover new places.

And I just wondered if you could share one of your favorite places and

just tell us what you love about it.

I

I think, um, well I lived in London for a few years.

I and think it's, it's just an interesting, it's interesting

fun place and I plan to stay.

We, we, I went there last summer with the kids, they got to see like the Natural

History Museum and just explore, even things like the tube is fun to them.

So, um, there's always so much to do, there's so many things to see.

Yeah, so I'm going to go to London.

Yeah,

love it.

I.

I sometimes where every time I go and visit London, I always think,

why don't I come in more often?

Because I always have such a good day out and there's so much to see there.

I don't know who it was that said it, but they say, you know, you're

bored with London, bored with life.

Like you could

do something different there every weekend for a whole year

and still not see everything.

And, there are, there is a lot you can do there for free as well, actually.

you can go for a family day out and it doesn't necessarily, I mean, it

can cost a fortune depending on what you do, but it doesn't necessarily

have to, places like you say, the Natural History Museum, the Science

Museum, great places to go and visit.

Ian, it's been a pleasure to talk with you.

So thank you so much for your time.

Could you, Remind everybody where to find you online.

Where's the best place to connect with you?

For professionals, you know, connect with me on LinkedIn,

I'm always open for a chat and kind of, you know, quite happy to, to

just be a bit of a sounding board.

Or you can check out my website, which is www.

iconic

iconic

architecture.

co.

uk.

Yeah, I think so.

And yeah, I am on Instagram and on a variety of other ones, but

it's, yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place to contact me.

Awesome.

I'll I'll put a link to the website in the show notes, uh, so that people

can, can find you via that site.

Okay.

So thanks again, Ian.

Now, thanks, it's been a good chat.

Next time I'll be chatting with Ray brown about

foundational business education.

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