What Have You Done for Me Lately? How AEC Firms Can Build More Valuable, Outcome-Driven Relationships with Their IT and BIM Partners

Foreign.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Design Under Influence.

This is your host, Alex Osenenko.

I am growth manager or chief of growth at ARC IT where we help engineering, design architecture companies with their it so you can focus on doing your best work and not worry about things breaking down.

Here with me are my co hosts, Liz and Megan.

They run a company called Aurora Bim and I'll let one of them, whoever's first, to talk about what they do.

We specialize in helping small to medium architectural and structural firm navigate the BIM world.

So that can be anything from transitions from CAD to revit or moving up to the cloud in the ACC environment, or just dusting off the old template and giving it a new life and being the phone a friend on deadline day.

Phone a friend.

Love it.

So both of us are passionate about helping our clients do the best work, which is, you know, again, architects, design engineering companies.

And what we have discussed for like almost 45 minutes before we started the show is this kind of commonality across the board for all consultants and other companies or other partners.

I suppose that the question we ask as executives, right.

What have you done for me lately that seems to prevail kind of throughout the year.

And we always try to justify every expense or investment on the, on.

On the profit and loss statement.

And we see this number, you know, multiple thousands of dollars we paid to Aurora BIM and in Q1, which is where we at.

You know, we were just inundated with this sort of like, what have you done for me lately?

And so what we're going to do in this episode, we're going to help architects, design and engineering companies figure out how to build the best possible relationship with their consultants like us.

So we're gonna kind of pretend play right here and tell you how you should manage us so we can help you and we all win together.

Right?

Right.

Confusing.

That's the dream.

That's the dream.

That's the dream.

Okay.

That's the dream.

Every time Liz Omegan mentioned Progress Bar in this podcast, my vote is it's gonna be mentioned two or three times.

It could be a lot more, but we'll cut it out.

So that's the magic of a layer of editing we'll have.

But we talked a lot about that and it's all about progress bar.

Do you want it, Liz?

Do you want to talk about that?

Like, how or Megan?

I mean, I think.

Yeah.

Cool.

Well, it's actually.

It's actually A concept Megan and I have talked a lot about, but Megan introduced it.

Cause you read an article about that, Megan, so I'll let you summarize it.

Sure.

So this was probably about eight years ago.

I read an article and it was while I was working at another company and my boss was really stressed out because he had just gotten an earful from a client, a client that we had kind of gone quiet on and they hadn't heard from us.

And of course we were behind, but we didn't want to tell them that we were behind.

So it just was radio silence from Aria.

Finally the client called and chewed us, chewed him out.

Then he came out just all defeated.

And I don't know, this, like this blog popped up in my world right after that and I was like, oh my gosh, that's what happened.

I was like, we didn't give this client any sort of update, even if it was bad, even if it was a slow progress bar.

We hadn't even told them anything.

So they increasingly got more frustrated and angry that they hadn't heard from us, didn't know what was going on.

And then we got the angry phone call.

So I really started to like, kind of dig into this, this blog that I found.

And it was really about the beginning of the Internet and in people's willingness to wait for, even dial up.

Right.

Like, if you hadn't heard that like, like, you know, and knew that it was like doing that connecting thing, would you have waited for it to connect or would you have just been like, oh, you know, it's probably working with like new technology and that kind of new way of, of, of living in the world where you now had access to this, like the interweb.

You needed to know that you were being connected and you were willing to wait because you heard it working.

Whether it was taking a long time or not, you still heard it struggle.

I don't know exactly where that like actual sound came from, like if it actually was related to how it was struggling or not.

But you were willing to wait.

And so this, this continued in this blog to describe.

Also, when you're willing to wait for a website, websites didn't used to have progress bars or loading bars.

And just human nature was to become increasingly frustrated with waiting and not knowing and actually just giving up.

Like you were a lot less willing to wait if you don't know that something is happening in the background.

So that was kind of the gist of this, this overall, like, article and then how it translates into consulting and into just Working in a professional environment and having that just be something that you think about, like whether or not you are scared to give an update because it's maybe not a good one.

It is still better than no update at all because it is this progress bar.

Whether it's a progress bar that's going into the red or moving slow or whatever, it is still a million times better than no progress bar at all.

And that makes sense.

I think the best manifestation of that for me was the dmv.

It's, oh, yeah, I don't know if you're old enough to be in the DMV.

You know, when I was getting my license at 16, whatever, and I'm old to now, but before they used to just call a number.

You'll take a ticket, like a paper ticket, right.

And you just sit there and yeah, it says E24, but you have no idea, you know, what are they serving that way.

Yeah.

And then they had the screen recently, within the last 10, 10 years maybe now they have a screen and you can kind of see and sort of at least have progress.

Hope that you'll get served at some point and have an idea.

But I think we should, let's, let's just go ahead and just dive headfirst into this.

I think that whole the concept is what, what would you, what would you, how would you recommend your clients keep tabs on you?

So there's not, not a Q1 madness, mad dash towards progress towards what have you done for me lately?

How would you, how would you recommend clients to manage you?

I mean, I think the, the easiest.

And Lizzo, I know you have lots of thoughts on this.

I'm excited to hear yours too.

On the easiest, most simplest way is, is if executive can talk to executive.

Right.

If we could have a meeting that is like monthly with the people making the decisions, the people that want to see the progress, and we can just quickly run them through everything that we've done.

High level boom.

That is their, that's their progress bar.

But the problem is that that is not usually achievable for us or for them.

And then, then they're relying on us sending either like a long email or an Excel or translating that through their employees to get to them.

And I think that's where all the issues are.

I don't know.

Liz, what do you think?

I think you're right.

But it also can be so in some cases the executives are really involved in the project, so they know.

So you can go in and talk technical.

But in other cases, for example, if we are assisting an architectural firm in template development, their CEO or head architect might not know anything about revit.

Or in some cases, the person running the company isn't an architect at all.

So if we sit down and I try to explain what we've been doing, it doesn't make any sense to them.

It's.

I could just make up words in bullet points and does that take five minutes or does that take five weeks?

I don't know because I am not, you know, in the nitty gritty.

So therefore, they.

They have to assign someone on their team who does know that.

So it will have to go through somebody.

So that's also tough because that person then ends up in a place where they're kind of stuck between two situations where they need to.

Also, our performance will reflect on them in a way, you know, so they're responsible for us.

And then how do they communicate that back up?

So.

So it's a tough.

It's really tough.

Cause like you said, Megan, we can write long emails, we can send Excels.

I've invited people to progress boards that we use internally so that they can see what's going on.

But if you have five minutes in your day as a CEO or someone running a company to check on a progress and you open up that board, it's just going to be overwhelming.

Where you open up that Excel, it's like, I don't even know what all this is.

So it's hard.

It's really hard.

I have an idea or a potential solution, at least what we're trying to implement and what you have called.

It's.

You're absolutely right.

When the executive team is intimately involved in the project, you know, it's a lot easier or intimately involved with the company and their technology.

For us, as an IT provider, that's a lot easier because they know what we're doing and we're talking a lot, and there's a roadmap for success and all that.

A lot of times we end up working with a champion.

We call him a champion.

Right?

They'll champion the.

They.

They'll champion our relationship within the company, and they'll champion the relationship initially when we sign, and then, you know, ongoing.

Sometimes the champion leaves.

God forbid that.

That usually creates a lot of chaos and justifications and.

But we're not talking about that.

So for us, I think the only thing we can do honestly is to justify this to the champion.

Right.

And in other words, not justify this, but have the system in place that we've pre Agreed on that.

How are we going to report progress?

Okay.

And once that is done and actually implemented, I think when the exact, let's say the champion fails to communicate, they're sick, whatever, they're out for a month.

And then, you know, somebody questions the validity of Aurora being what should be done, you know, you already have all that information because you've been communicating that to a champion.

Yeah, that makes sense.

But do you guys have a clear cadence and, or methodology for communicating with your champions?

Well, I would, I would add something to that because I think it's great in the beginning of a relationship to sit down and say, okay, so how are we going to communicate progress to each other?

Is it weekly meetings, monthly reports?

What are we going to do?

But it's also important to check back because we've had experience where we set that up.

In the beginning, we made a lot of transparency with a client.

They saw every single meeting we had because we would post the recordings there.

They.

And we would write who the meeting was with and how long it was in the topic so they could see the entire list.

We had Google Docs that had progress status and all kinds of things in it.

And in the end we still were getting, you know, this what have you done for me lately?

And we can't be like, well, look at all the stuff we sent you, because that sounds, that's what the answer.

You go back to a client.

Right.

And then trying to nail them down for a meeting was like impossible as well.

So I think it's, it's also important on a regular cadence to check in with that champion and say, is this all this effort we're doing to document and keep you updated, actually getting to the person, Is there an easier or better way we could do it?

Because in the end it can become just an overwhelming amount of admin that the client is paying for, but not getting anything out of.

Know what I mean?

That's the one I hate.

And sorry, Megan, if you wanted to add color to this, but that's the, what I hate the most about the work that I used to do as, as a growth consultant, marketing consultant.

It's like the, the, the amount of justification is almost as much as the amount actual work.

My, my fee is, you know, $300 an hour.

So you paying me to type up.

A report, that stuff.

But yeah, yeah, but, but without it, there's nowhere to go.

So Megan, did you want to add color before I actually shift to what I want to challenge you with and.

Myself, I have one other thought about how expectations and things can be managed kind of, I think, from the original initiation of the relationship as well.

So, like, I think we talk about this a lot with our clients.

Like, okay, do you have, like, a monthly budget that you'd like to stick to?

And I think as long as there's trust and you are within this monthly budget and things are running smoothly, and this probably, like, relates more to how you guys operate, Alex, where, you know, there were.

There was a fire, we fixed it.

But, like, other than that, there have been no problems.

This is just what you can expect to pay per month for this status quo, for this constant progress or support or, you know, phone a friend and then.

And then there.

Our answer to what have you done for us lately?

Is we've done all these things that we told you we would do in.

In, like, on a monthly basis.

So it's more of, like, setting expectations and trust and not having to justify every single little thing that we're doing, because we can't work like that, and we can't be successful in helping clients like that.

And that.

That really just means that there's lack of trust.

And if that's there, then it's not a good match.

So that's.

That's what I wanted to say.

That's a. Yeah, that's the first crack in the foundation that really, really starts damaging the relationship, and it just becomes pretty crazy.

But let me challenge you with something.

And this is.

We're going to kind of try to solve this together here because we're having similar issues as an IT provider.

You know, when nothing is wrong, we're doing a great job.

You're still paying 7,000amonth, but there's.

There's a couple of things that I think we need to talk.

We need to.

Both you and I need to do.

And we're in the middle of working through this process ourselves.

And that is.

I think our communication justification, AKA needs to be outcome driven, not progress bar driven.

In other words.

Well, progress bar is important, but, like, not, hey, here's my.

All my recordings.

Here's.

You know, I spent four hours planning, you know, two hours building.

And here's what I've done.

Here's the templates.

We.

I think it's like, outcome driven, and that's not easy, but initially, I think it's the first discovery, first conversation before you even bring a client.

What's the goal here?

Yeah, do you guys have a.

Usually, do you have a clear vision of what the goal is?

I would say it depends on what we Use the first introductory meeting, but also usually at least a month or two of regular meetings after is to define.

Because sometimes we do have clients that will come in and say, this is my goal.

Like, I hired my BIM manager.

We want to hire you.

Just be the BIM manager.

That's easy.

Then we have others who are like, we're transitioning and we have no idea what to do.

And so then we need to sit down and figure out a lot of answers to a lot of questions and we need to walk them through and eventually work to a common goal together.

So I would say that we do spend a lot of time with that, and that's probably the most important in the beginning is to figure out what are we doing here.

Also to align, as you brought up, Megan, like, we.

We want to make sure that we're the right choice for what they want to get done.

So if they need to just train their staff, that's not us.

Right.

And we're happy to point them in other directions and say, whenever you feel trained up, call us again and we'll help you out.

Where if it's a client, we're just feeling like this communication is not working or you don't even know your own expectations.

And we might say, you know what?

Go figure out what you need.

And to us later, because this no re.

There's no reason to start a relationship you can already see is going to turn out bad in the end.

But let me challenge you.

Can I challenge you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

On camera.

All right.

Do it live.

You can always cut it out.

Always cut it out.

You're right, it is.

Hey, can you be my BIM manager?

A goal?

I mean, yes and no.

Because I've had that job in a company in a couple different companies, like full time employment as a BIM manager.

So it's basically saying, will you be our BIM manager?

Will you be our IT guy?

That we don't pay full time.

And then you say, okay, well, like what you might discuss, okay, well, what does that look like in terms of hours per week or hours per month?

Is there a maximum?

And then along that way you get into that role, you.

Then you might start bringing up, well, I have an idea that you might want to refresh your template or you might want to work on this product.

Before we go there, before you even go there, go there.

Are you qualifying this as like, okay, yeah, we can be a BIM manager.

That's what we do.

But what are you trying to accomplish?

Yeah, I think that that's.

That Is a question in there, what do you expect?

And so what do they answer?

Well, it depends on the client.

Because, I mean, it's.

Well, okay, so let's say it's been a client who has had a BIM manager in the past.

They have a long list of things they didn't like.

So they'll tell us things they don't want.

You know, it usually has to do with personality or the way the person or the people who would work in it treat everyone around them when it comes to BIM and the different ways you can use software.

So then they might also come and say, all right, but we also want to create a new template for a new type of project or we want to want you to just be around for setting up new projects.

We want you to be the phone, a friend.

So we, we have a lot of different, We've had experience now that we can say, here's a bunch of stuff we do do.

Which of these things would you like us to do and which of the things?

Which should we say?

No, that's, that's go talk to the other person about, because we don't have mandate for that.

Okay, I still don't.

I still don't.

Well, let me just give you an example.

So when we bring a customer in for ARC it, we talk a lot about their business growth because we have to, you know, hey, how many employees are you adding?

Because you know, there's more equipment, that's more ser.

You know, that's more processing power, all that stuff.

It's sort of natural progression for us.

We didn't really think about it.

We had to do it.

We build a roadmap.

It's a, it's a three to five year technology roadmap that we initially built during the initial implementation process.

And that's a lot of work.

A lot of work.

We have the top engineers in the company do that.

Only it's not like junior level job.

It's, it's, you know, asking questions, all those things.

And so what we haven't done a good job on is to sit down with the customer twice a year, which we're implementing now, and go through to that map and says, you look, I mean, you've added, instead of three, you've added seven employees.

Great job.

What does that mean now?

Your server or the computers for like we can talk about specific technology aspects or how are you using AI?

What's happening in your business?

So the first part of the sbr, which is semiannual business review, is all about their Business goals.

We connecting the business goal.

We're looking at the goal document, which is the roadmap and saying, is this still valid?

You know, here's what we've done.

But that's not the first question.

Is not what we've done, because that's the second section for us.

First section is business goals where we discuss it and readjust the map.

And what I'm not seeing from.

From what you told me, Liz, is that that aspect of things that could be the specific to your line of work, which I'm trying to understand better.

Yeah, no, I mean that's a good point.

And I don't think that at all.

I'm trying to think about our first conversations we have with clients.

And I mean, some of the business goals might be wrapped in there.

It might be that they say our goal is to transition our firm from this software to another.

And of course we do ask them.

Yeah, that's clear.

And we of course we need to know how many people are using currently using the software.

How many people will be using the software.

We that.

Because that also informs, you know, what is the.

What is the team that's going to be giving us feedback from this?

I mean, I would say that we don't really get very deep into our clients actual business goals.

I think therein lies an opportunity because as a marketing consultant, which is a person who gets kicked around first, kicked out first.

I mean, you know, the first thing you look at, trust me, not you guys, not me.

The it first you look at your marketing and you're like, you know, yeah, no, that money we paid that didn't get do anything for us.

Boom, foot out of the door.

And so what.

What I've learned over time is the most important thing is to connect and around a whole marketing company, that's the same thing.

You still have to justify your existence every month almost.

But it's connecting to the outcomes.

It's like, okay, so you want to build this website, you want to have this podcast, you want to have this blog.

Let's talk about what the actual.

So at the end of the day, you need.

How many more clients do you want to add?

Yeah.

What is your marketing plan like?

All right, let's talk about many clients.

So this many clicks leads to this many, you know, this many forms.

This many forms lead to this, you know, I mean, so we work backwards and I'm wondering if we could use this and we haven't here in attic.

It not.

I'm not saying that we're like, I'm not teaching you anything, but I'm using my previous experience to justify the worst possible job growth or it's possible to justify, hardest to justify and see if we can adopt it.

Because I think as an executive and let's say I have a partner, let's say someone does hardware setup for us, for our clients and we outsource that.

Let's say we don't, but let's say we do.

And you know, I know exactly how many computers they have built.

That's not the problem.

The problem is how many computers have they built correctly and how many five star reviews do I have based on their work from my clients.

That's my outcome.

Like if the computers are late, built late, I will understand that.

I will get on them.

I understand all that.

What I don't want is those builds being somewhat okay, but they have to still do a lot of work to bring that computer to, you know, you know what I'm saying?

It's me, it's how my customers feel about your builds.

Period.

Done.

End of story.

That's my goal.

And if I'm calling to the CEO of that company, my partner and my thing is, hey, we just gave you $10,000 in December.

I'm not even calling them because they're sending me 100% satisfaction rate.

We set up 48 computers.

Here's the feedback from your clients that you can put on your website to justify my work and making you look good.

That reminds me.

No, no, no, no.

We've been doing feedback now from our clients and we got a really great quote which is that we make revit suck less on our website.

I think I win an award for that.

Yeah, no, but you bring up a good point.

And I think sometimes maybe what, what would be.

And I don't want to do like a rating system every time they.

Because really what it is is that when we work with and like Megan, in your side of things, you're working with a lot of people internally in that company and they are all really appreciative of the work you are doing.

You and the team are doing like they say those things that they're very, very happy.

So it's almost like if we get too much of, I don't know how to make that more visible to their managers.

Because if that's kind of like the five star review, you know.

But you have to, I think what you have to do, what we have to do better is understand what managers goals are.

Yeah, manager goals is not to manage the manager's goals is Performance based and that is to finish the project on time, get more projects or variation of.

The two and make money doing it.

That goes without saying, right?

Well, I guess maybe it should be said but it's hard like in software we use to justify number of hours we save a company by deploying our system.

You know, we use like accounting software.

It was very clear.

It was, the goal is very clear.

Hey, we'll save you 600 hours per month, times whatever so you can have your people do important stuff, not this crap.

And that like justifies the price.

Easy.

How do we connect what we do to dollars and cents?

Because I think you brought up a good point.

Make money.

I mean that's also something that.

So the consultancy world, not so much us in this conversation because I know we're all so busy that we're not looking to add more hours to our day, but working in firm as just like a doer of doing.

If you came to the boss and you said look, I have this automation that will save me so much time and if I spend 10 hours building it, I'm going to save the client 100 hours, they will say no because I want to get paid for those hundred hours.

And, and we bill hours, so go back to work and do your thing.

And so now in this other level where we, the more we can automate and adjust for our clients, that is a savings.

But it's so hard to measure.

It's so hard to measure for us, right?

It's, it's like we might make a button that saves you 30 seconds for every time you do a task.

But how do you measure that?

How do you measure how many times you're doing that task?

So how do we sell that to them?

This is like one of the things that like our button creator has been asking.

Like he's like, we are making their workflows a lot more efficient from, for now and for the future.

And like if we were app developers, we would be charging like a yearly maintenance fee or we would be like selling that as a product in some way.

And but it's really difficult if you don't have that conversation up front first with the client and say, okay, we're going to build this thing, it's going to save you this much time versus like this is just part of our process.

We want to work faster so that we can get the work done faster.

We're going to build this button and like it's a bonus, you guys get to use it too.

But we can't charge them for that after we've already made the decision to build it without them telling us, yes, we want that.

Because that's actually kind of a lot of times a hard sell if you don't know that it is actually going to work and you just need to do R and D and develop it and maybe it doesn't work the first time and you don't want to be held accountable for that.

So it's like this really weird kind of place to be in when you are working in software.

Would you agree, Alex?

Like where you are creating these tools and things that maybe you don't want to have to get their permission for first, but is going to benefit them long term.

I think what we're missing out on is understanding of.

Very understanding of challenges of the executives of the companies we serve.

Okay, that's a little bit of a pyramid, right?

But we serve companies that employ people and the executives are responsible for that employment and their company's success.

We need to understand that's end of the day, that's who our customer is.

I think what we're not doing well is not translating what we do in dollars, in dollars, or in hours.

So this is back from my software experience and Megan, you brought up.

It's all about how many hours I'm gonna save you.

So if I'm gonna send you a report with 14 screen captures and all these templates I've built, but on top of the report, it should say, this work has saved your company 48 hours of labor per quarter and it will continue to save that for through an infinity or whatever.

How do you do that?

Let me explain something.

Let me give you an example.

Okay, Let me give you an example.

We were challenged with, hey, what have you done for me lately?

Well, nothing broke.

We're in IT, guys.

Nothing broke.

And they're like, well, yeah.

And they're like, well, do you realize this, that we did a numbers.

We run the numbers.

It's all math.

On a $10 million company, which is like average client for us, right?

$10 million company, one hour of downtime.

It costs exactly $1,141.

I'm not.

I can work that math backwards with them easily.

$1,141.

How many hours were you down before you hired ARC?

It was.

Well, because, you know, they always hire us because of a problem.

So they had problems, and now you're not.

So on a week, if you're down for a week, that's 191,000.

Exactly.

But it's hard for us because, like, okay, take an example.

Like, because our clients often come to us too when things are broken.

So they might say we're annoyed because we don't have a good revit template.

It takes us so long to set up projects and in projects we spend so much time tweaking things and, and doing stuff.

I, yeah, I could ask them maybe, okay, what's the average time it takes you to set up project?

But let's say that, let's say that I make a great template and a BIM manual and some little automations and we have that all going.

Now when someone starts a project, yes, we could say, how much did it take you.

But when it's hard to measure is when the person got stuck and they went and looked at the BIM manual instead of just stopping work or instead of googling for three hours or instead of doing the wrong thing and breaking stuff.

That's.

There's so much that won't be able to be measured that setting up processes and ability and teaching, like putting information in their head, it's just like.

And it's also, it's also not us.

It's like them.

It's also the like, other variable.

It's their team using the stuff that we created.

So, so that's the other, like kind of just other level of separation that you guys don't have with it is you can you control it, you implement it, you're not expecting anyone else to use it properly.

In order for you guys to be successful at your job, we are, but.

You need to call this out.

See, here's the thing.

Here's the thing.

If the employees are not using the tools you've built correctly, you should be proactively calling this out and not waiting for, you're not waiting for that dreaded phone call because you know they're not using it, right?

Well, we don't know.

We don't know.

We can't, we can't know that.

I mean, the only way we find out is that I might get a call or I'm making it a call saying, hey, this isn't working.

Or I have a problem in a project and we jump in and we look at, we screen share and you know, you work together like, oh, well, you're not actually using this correctly according to the company standards or according to whatever.

And then of course they learn, and now they've learned.

But until they call us or flag it up or someone else on the team flags it up, we don't know.

Fine.

I would agree on this.

Point.

But I, I think suffice it to say I don't want to make this into this, this, this sort of kind of like actual operation manual for consulting business.

Sure.

Which is what we're doing.

And we're kind of doing that.

Yeah.

Right.

But because I am the same way.

We have consultants and partners that we need to hold accountable.

They're.

They're an expense line item on the P and L. They.

The.

In a dark, dark part of the P and L. This is.

I want to get rid of all of that.

You know, do I need two line phones or just one line phone?

Right, Exactly.

So you already are behind.

And I think what we need to do is really.

And this is like I'm, I'm sort of myself kind of talking myself from this conversation.

I'm just like, well we don't do really good job figuring out outcomes and connecting our work to them.

Yeah.

And figuring out how to defend.

Oh, you were not down.

So you saved eleven hundred dollars an hour.

But really that's already reactive.

Yeah.

Proactive would be something different.

I think what we should do and, and for you guys I would love.

In fact I'm gonna volunteer if you, if you want.

I'm gonna give you.

I'm gonna give you a feel.

I'd love to dig in and understand what your discovery looks like with the client and help you tweak it to where you ask open ended questions related to outcomes.

Yeah.

I think you guys love you guys so technical.

I think you love to get technical.

And he was like yes.

Let me see what you got there.

Open this up.

Oh no, here.

I can fix that.

I can fix that.

I fix that versus like wait a second, what does that.

What are you guys trying to do here?

Yeah, but we do ask that.

But I think it would be good to take away from this.

I hope other people do.

Is that maybe asking more of the question of what are your overall company's goals here?

Are you looking to expand and that's why you want to bring in this new software or and go on the cloud or are you looking to partner up more with sub consultants or what.

What are we doing here?

And more than just because we tend to stay in the box of Revit and Ben when we ask those questions instead of bigger questions.

Same with it.

Same with marketing.

We all try to.

We all stay in our lane which is I think comes up and becomes that an admin burden that we.

Because we're so, you know, we're so good at our lanes and that's I think that's.

That that bites us in the butt.

I was just gonna say, I think you're right.

I think that there is something to be outlined in our discoveries that we don't currently do with big picture goals that the executives can relate to.

So not as technical as the template, not as technical as the little problems that we're going to start solving right away, but as big as, like, okay, this project is coming up.

It's bigger than what we're used to.

We know we're going to need new skills and new templates and new things to do that.

So we then relate all of our milestones and our, our reports back to these four or five things like that we're progressing towards that they understand versus the nitty gritty.

Yeah, that's perfect.

I think that's right there.

Cut this out.

Sorry, I'm just going to say cut this out right here and make it a little bit of a theme of our episode.

I think that's exactly where it is.

Like we need and we don't do it.

I don't do it now.

Well, I was going to add on to that, that having that discussion in the beginning where you ask bigger picture questions like that.

Also people love to talk about themselves and about their companies and then all of a sudden, oh, we're interested in their company.

Because I think sometimes it can feel like a consultant is just coming in and we don't care about your company.

We just want to do work and get paid.

But if you're coming in and saying, well, I actually care about the health and, and the progression of this company because I want you as a client to do well so that we can continue this relationship, it also can build that foundation of trust.

So when there are issues with money or issues with billing or things, they don't feel like you are here to like, squeeze them dry.

You actually care and you're willing to work within their parameters and their goals to achieve the end result.

Let me venture a little bit of a guess out there or I guess an assumption, which is hate making assumptions.

Let me venture an assumption.

I think as an executive, I can relate to it on my end.

So I'm going to make an assumption, I think, I think outcome driven.

So if periodic reports from my consultants are connected to my outcome, where I can understand within the first 10 seconds what's going on before I dig into the rest of the report, I don't need the progress bar.

I don't want to be bothered.

Maybe you as the executive don't need the progress bar.

Maybe it's the champion who needs the progress bar.

Possibly.

Yes.

Yeah, I think it's the like day to day functioning and the people you're working with that need the progress bar.

But I think, I think the other like key term that we haven't really talked about here is change management and that that is a big part of what we actually are providing the change and the tools.

But we're not, we're not change management experts.

Like there's usually maybe even in bigger companies like someone dedicated to that they have a champion that is dedicated to this change and to the process that needs to occur to help everyone transition and accept and you know, like, I think, listen, you and I went to that one out of this university class where it was like they just let everyone come in and have a, I'm going to swear a bitch session before they like implemented change or like right at the beginning so that they can just complain, complain, complain, complain, complain.

We actually talked about that previously.

But that's something I've been using for a long time with like the users.

The users.

But we're not doing it with the.

I think, I think that Alex has a point.

I think that there is not that we need to get more clients, but I think that right now we don't have that problem, but one day and.

I'll get more better clients to be.

We want our clients to be happy and we want them to give us good reviews and we want like that's the whole point of this is that.

You want to make money too.

Right.

And to make money you have to make your work efficient.

So you're not justifying, you're spending, you know, 30, 40% of your, of your talent on justifications.

Which is silly.

It's true.

Yeah.

I think, and I think we are doing it in a roundabout way for it to get back to the executives and it just isn't landing outcome connected.

So let's think around that.

Let's leave it at this.

I think we can go deeper on this if, if you have a mind to, to have a conversation with me off camera on how to design the discovery process.

I'd love to because I actually very curious as to how BIM is being integrated into what challenges people have, what they ask you to do, because it does connect to what we do because.

And also it will help me recommend you better because I will understand deeper as to what you solve and what you don't and what.

Anyway, so if you want that, that invitation is open, let's Wrap this up.

Let's wrap this up.

And I. I think I just want to get that.

I, I honestly, after this conversation, I just want to go and start writing stuff out for us, because this just tired.

I just landed with it.

It just connected with me.

Outcome driven.

It needs to be connected to hours saved or dollar saved, period.

And if I could do that efficiently and without, like, pretentious, you know, start putting stuff.

Oh, you know, we just hoped the ticket, you know, that saved you 10 hours.

So that's what we just made you.

$10,000.

Now, that's BS but authentically connecting our work to outcomes.

Boom.

Need to think that through.

Yeah.

And I bet you I can be a huge help in this too.

100%.

Yeah.

1.

But you have to prompt it the right way, and you have to, you know, really deeply understand.

Yeah.

But it certainly can help you.

In fact.

Great idea.

All right, I want to go.

Do.

Do you guys have any parting wisdom you want to share?

No, You've got all my wisdom for today.

That was it.

It's been a long call, but I missed you guys.

It's been a while since we got a while.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

So want to wish everyone Happy New Year?

I don't know.

It's.

It's been a month already, but whatever.

Half a month.

Happy new year.

Projects are picking up, businesses picking up.

Let's keep going the right directions.

Let's build, build, build.

Yeah.

Build.

Looking forward.

All right, thanks, Alex.

See you next time.

Thank you very much.