Marketing

Note 004: Attention please!

Jul 23, 2021

I couldn’t believe we had pulled it off.

Pedestrians were streaming by on their way to work, traffic jammed and noisy on Sydney’s Oxford Street, and I was giddy with excitement as my 1st client unlocked the doors for what would be my 1st measure-up.

Soon after, as I peeled my good-jeans and tape-measure from the alcohol soaked carpet floor under the front bar and went back out to the street for a breath of fresh air… it dawned on me:

The idea of an - ‘interior transformation’ - of Stonewall (a Sydney gay bar institution) sounded much more glamorous the night before than it was turning out to be at 9am on a weekday morning with daylight streaming in and haze in the air…

But I had begun.

Welcome, to Marketing.

What is marketing?

Perhaps a precursor to that question: why do you want to kick off, run and grow your own architectural practice?

For me, I can think of no greater privilege than being paid to be creative, especially when it improves the lives of so many others at the same time.

But that’s internal, that’s for me. That’s for us.

Remember, you are a professional now - schools out.

So what we are really in the business of producing are not only valuable, beautiful, intelligent buildings, but (possibly more importantly), show-stopping client experiences for your clients - for people.

As I outlined in length in Note 002: Networking, the number 1 thing you can do to create future opportunity is to strengthen, give, help, support and connect your network. That is the best long-term strategy, win-win, the one I nurture to everyday, and recommend you begin yourself.

If I am honest with myself, for me Networking is Marketing. Let’s call this New Marketing for our connection economy.

What follows is the less than perfect tale of what I actually did in the beginning. Old Marketing.

Jumping ship

The team had undergone its final contraction, it was just the 2 of us, melancholic but grateful at Circular Quay, looking at Utzon’s Sydney Opera House in front of us over the water, final defects completed for the MCA Australia behind us.

After 10 years, the recently stalling partnership, and Capital-A-Architecture major project exhaustion, I gave my notice.

I decided to take the 40 minute walk back to our Surry Hills studio instead of the usual Cab-ride together. I had some serious thinking to do.

It was on that walk that I had a few realisations.

Before I had even reached the Cahill Expressway underpass 200m in I had made the meta-decision above all others:

I was going to start my own Studio.

Realisations

5 minutes in and the dizzying high of that decision was accompanied by some starker realisations.

After years of renting, saving and looking, we had finally put a deposit down on a tiny terrace in Beaconsfield, just south of Redfern.

Realisation 1: Fortnightly paycheques were about to end forever - at exactly the point that our not-insignificant Sydney mortgage payments on our 1st home would begin

OK, time to check the post-house-deposit savings on the iPhone.

$2,200. Thats what I’ve got to work with.

I call my wife for the ‘news’ and get some of my own ‘news’ back - we are pregnant with number 3! Woohoo!

Realisation 2: Life is about to get significantly more challenging than the already-significantly-more-challenging-life-decision only 5 minutes prior

OK. We have a brief (design a Practice), we have a budget ($2,200), and we have a programme (30 minutes walk left). The clock is ticking - it’s time for action.

I recalled Hannah Tribes advice to me at the AIA earlier in the week (see Note 000: Kick Off) - “All you need to start a practice is your PI insurance and 3 small jobs to replace an income”

Realisation 3: I need a name!

Actions

Architects Registration / ABN / PI Insurance

I called the AIA Small Practice PI Services. I was already a Registered Architect and had an ABN.

Step 1: $1 million PI Insurance policy - $1,100 ($1,100 left)

Name / Domain / ASIC

Naming is a hard one. We had spent years discussing the nuances of transitioning to ‘Marshall Donaldson’, so I wanted to start afresh from that line of thinking. At the same time, I dod not want to simply pick an unrelated word out of thin air.

Thinking about naming took me back to my metal-band high school days1. Naming the band was a lot of fun, partly because we were such a tight group, and that the sound itself led towards certain imagery made things easier.

But what would the imagery be of my practice yet to be formed? I didn’t want to influence my future creativity in any way.

I loved graphic design and typography in particular, so settled on Andrew Donaldson Architecture and Design for the ADAD graphic potential.

Besides, time was running out.

I checked wether the domain was available. (Hot Tip - do this very early, as short, snappy ‘digital real-estate’ is as rare as the physical).

ADAD.com and andrewdonaldson.com were taken, but there was a workaround:

A bonus of being a legitimate Australian Company, is the protection of .com.au ‘digital real-estate’. Therefore, there is a higher chance that you can lock in the domain you want.

Step 2: I called ASIC and registered my Business Name - $70 ($1,030 left)
Step 3: I bought and registered my Domain - $220 ($810 left)

And so andrewdonaldson.com.au was born.

We are in business here! $810 left and a 10 minute walk up Devonshire Street.

Website / Logo / Business Cards

I called Dane, my best mate from high school, who is a graphic designer also based in Surry Hills. We are both very excited by the prospect of what is happening and he gives me a lead for a contact they use for Business Card printing in Chippendale.

Step 4: I call, get a quote and for an idea for pure white on recycled card - $400 ($410 left)

I am almost back to the Studio, and I drop into Mr Copy where I have printed many, many things over the years. I am in a frantic, but excited state.

I negotiate with a young web developer that shared the space, and laid it out for her - can $410 get my name and mobile number on a static image on this website?

Step 5: A basic holding page, my ‘logo’, in a terrible font, and my contact details - $400 ($10 left)

And we are away! Time to celebrate the small wins (an important concept I’ll return to in a future note)

Bonus Step 6: Buy a mate that supported you a beer, in this case Dane :) - $10 ($0 left)

I was in business.

Marketing - Old and New

I‘m in business!

So what do I do next?

More accurately, I am a business, and now I desperately need to find some clients to be in business.

Enter Marketing.

Old Marketing (although I did not know this at the time)

The Business Cards were ready.

I had picked them up, crisp, beautiful, expensive, and met Dane after work at the Forrester’s Pub.

We were both very excited, both quite personable guys, anyway and literally started introducing ourselves to strangers over the course of an hour or 2 stretch in the pub, crafting a make-shift elevator pitch by trial an error.

(It is with some nostalgia I write this from Sydney lockdown 2021, where packed pub’s seem like a distant memory).

To cut to the chase - this cold-calling technique has a 0.0001% chance of working. But:

These rapid introductions forced me to become very comfortable being uncomfortable, over and over, in a short period of time. Introducing yourself, or ‘putting yourself out there’ - like anything, gets easier with repetition over time.

And then, by a statistical miracle, 2 blokes came over after overhearing us in our excitement, and said that they own Stonewall down the road on Oxford Street and were looking for an architect.

After a beer together, they outlined their brief, i outlined my story of literally starting a practice this minute and we shook hands.

And thats how I came to be measuring-up that hazy gay bar in the bright light of day the very next morning, less than 24 hours from collecting my business cards and introducing myself to every stranger I could.

Your excitement is infectious!

New Marketing (although I did not know this at the time)

I had been sleeping on Dane’s couch in Bellevue Hill for a few weeks leading up to that night as we waited for our house purchase to settle. Dane, as a senior talent scout in his Graphic Firm, let me know that I should setup a Linked In profile - just in case I need a job.

Over a few nights I fully fleshed that out with him - thinking I would never use it as I never had needed to up to that point. (Ill go into how I got my 1st - and only job - as a young student in a future note)

Here are my introductory Top Tips for Marketing yourself and your practice at the early stage:

The process of collating my full CV, achievements, education, awards, etc. down on paper had a very positive mental effect. I thought I was just doing this as a fallback in case I needed a job as plan B, (which I was), but it also gave me the confidence that I had achieved a lot by this point in my life, was very employable, and that filled me with confidence.
It was only over the next 6 months that I started to get contacted through Linked In, that I realised the power of spreading your message to the right audience.
Through that same period I was carefully crafting emails, message by message, to my initial 50-100 close contacts related to the industry. Friends, other architects, builders, consultants, contractors.
I did not work on my brand, logo, PR exercises at all for the 1st 2 years - I was heads down to work as hard as I could for my clients, for whatever small jobs I could get, increasing over time. My personality leans towards focusing on the super-long term, which was helpful here.
Word of mouth referrals are the best you can get and before you have completed projects, these will be based on your existing network relationships (your skills as well as attitude and character - hence the golden rule from Note 000 - be nice to everybody)
Then down the track when you have completed projects and happy, blown away clients that will refer you on, these techniques get supplemented with a more advanced Stage 2 marketing system, to get you even better projects from within your inner circle. But for now:

My number 1 Marketing tip for those of you who have just kicked off your practice - focus on your Network, and your network will become your marketers.

I will follow up this note with a Part 2 for those of you who are more established with some advanced Marketing and what has worked for me as I have built more authority. There are different strategies for different stages.

Your focus challenge for this week, and all weeks, - tend to your network :)

Your level up challenge for this week if you are ready - start your business!

See you soon.

Andrew Donaldson

Note 004 done and dusted! Please give me any feedback whatsoever, I would love to hear from you - after all, this is for you :)

PS - if you have a friend, colleague, or archi-buddy that you think would benefit from Andrew’s Notes, please feel free to send this to them or share with the button below: - lets grow this tribe :)

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