EntreArchitect Podcast with Mark R. LePage

I am, like so many of you I am a dreamer. Every day of my life, since I was a small child, I have lived much of my waking life and in fact, many of my sleeping hours as well, dreaming about my future. What life will be like when I finally reach that pinnacle of success. I have always had the ability to create a very lucid vision for my tomorrow. I can certainly credit much of my success and many o...

I believe the most important business skill you need to succeed is knowing how to build rapport. This week on the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast, I share my 10 steps to build better rapport and close more sales. Please review this podcast on iTunes. Referenced in This Episode Entrepreneur Architect Podcast Episode 31: The Architectural Services Sales System Entrepreneur Architect Hybrid Proposal f...

My name is Mark R. LePage and I am a recovering procrastinator. After 40+ years, I don't have much hope of ever finding a cure, but recently I have found some ways to hang on to the wagon and stay focused on getting things done. With so many things on my plate, I often find myself paralyzed with overwhelm and I get nothing done. I fall back on old bad habits of soothing time wasters like clic...

Last December I was invited to speak at AIAS Forum 2013; the American Institute of Architecture Students national convention. This year the event was held in Chicago Yes, Chicago in December, and yes, we were snowed-in for days. While we waited for the airports to open, I had the opportunity to speak in length with many of the architecture students in attendance. They asked me many questions, but...

Everything I do in business, I approach as an experiment. It’s been 9 months since moving Fivecat Studio out of our 2,000 square foot studio in Pleasantville, New York to a new 200 square foot studio in our Chappaqua home. It’s been very successful and I love what we’re doing, but this week on the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast, I will share five mistakes I made when launching my...

It is the individual small firm architects, taking charge of their own success and working with other individual architects; collaborating and sharing their knowledge that will really take this profession to new levels… and this really excites me. Today on the podcast, in the spirit of sharing what is exciting me most, I want to present an update on my progress here at Entrepreneur Architect...

To successfully complete a project, an architect is responsible for making thousands of critical decisions. To complete the development of a standard residential additions and alterations project, it takes several months of focus and dedication. Many of us work long hours, long into the night, through weekends and holidays. The innovative ideas and concepts we create can often only be born after h...

A little past 6AM, tunes from the local radio station wake me from a very deep slumber. Typically, I will set the alarm to 6:14, so I hear music rather than the daily bad news report. I am very serious about my full media blackout . I certainly don't spend enough time sleeping and for the past few weeks I've been rising at 4:34AM. My oldest son James decided that he wanted to join a morn...

This week on the podcast, I invited small firm architects Lee Calisti , Jeremiah Russell , Steve May and Neal Pann to discuss the virtual studio business model. Neal was in the wilds of Canada on vacation and could not make it to the call, but Lee, Jeremiah, Steve and I had a very interesting conversation about how my new virtual studio is working. We discussed how the model could be used to help...

In the 15 years that Annmarie and I have been practicing at our small residential architecture firm, we have seen much of our hardware come and go. We launched the firm with a single Dell workstation, a monster CRT monitor and an inexpensive all-in-one scanner, printer, fax machine. Today we're running Apple computers and the fax machine is long gone. On this episode of the Entrepreneur Archi...

Late yesterday afternoon, I received an email from my friend Bob Borson of Life of an Architect . His message was a challenge to all architect bloggers on the internet. Bob challenged us to coordinate a series of blog posts, (and this podcast episode) all to be published on the same day and answering the same 11 questions. Please review this podcast on iTunes. Here are the 11 questions Bob present...

This week on the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast, I talk about my week and share my insights on the Business Plan Competition and the AIA National Convention. It was a fantastic week. Please review the podcast on iTunes. References from this Episode Architecture Business Plan Competition AIA Convention WoodenBoat Show in Mystic Connecticut Hotel Burnham Eleven:59 Studio Latent Design Ascent Archite...

This week on the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast I chatted with my friend Enoch Sears, the founder of BusinessOfArchitecture.com. Each week, Enoch hosts the Business of Architecture Show, a video podcast, which may be viewed on his website , on his YouTube channel or you may listen to the audio on iTunes . Enoch’s show is specifically focused on advancing the business of architecture through...

When Annmarie and I launched Fivecat Studio back in 1999, we took the work we could get and charged what we thought our clients wanted to pay. As we matured as architects and grew as a business, we learned that we needed to make more money in order to build a better business. Are you in this same position? Are you working too hard and earning too little? This week on the Entrepreneur Architect Pod...

Residential architecture is very different than any other building type. The scale is different. The materials are different. The details are different… and our clients well, they are very different. The life of a residential architect is very challenging. The psychology involved in a successful residential architecture project is something that can only be learned after many years in practi...

This week on the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast, I am turning things over to you, the Entrepreneur Architect Community. Every day I receive emails from members of the community. Many are letters of support and encouragement and truthfully, those are the emails that inspire me to continue and to grow Entrepreneur Architect into all that it can be. So I thank you for sending those messages. Many oth...

We need to talk. This may be uncomfortable, but we need to talk about money. Are you making enough to finish each month with a profit? Are you making enough to live comfortably? Are you making enough to simply pay the bills? So many architects I know are not making ends meet. We architects are notoriously horrible business people. My mission is to change that. (So share this blog with every archit...

One of the most important of all the tasks we perform as architects is Project Management. The success of each project sits squarely in our hands. If managed poorly, a single project may set our progress back years. If managed well, it can take us to great heights. This week on the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast, I share my Ten Rules to Project Management Success. Please review the podcast on iTun...

I met my wife Annmarie in 1993 at my first job with Barry Poskanzer Architecture and Planning in Ridgewood, NJ. I had been working as an intern for several months and Barry was seeking a new employee, another intern to help with lower level tasks and to work with the licensed architects in the firm as a draftsman. If you are interested in my story my journey from architecture school to owning my o...

One of the most important tasks architects should be doing to improve the success of their firms is to develop strong business systems that will allow them to quickly perform the routine everyday tasks of running a busy architecture firm. The quickest and maybe the most effective way to do this is to leverage the power of software developed to perform these tasks with ease and efficiency. Steven B...

Architecture school graduating classes consist of approximately 50% men and 50% women, but somewhere along the way to licensure, 32% of the women drop out of the profession to pursue other paths. Why does this gender gap exist? What are those women doing, if they're not pursuing architecture? Where did they go? My guest this week on the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast, is on a mission to find...

When I speak with architects about the critical issues we are facing in the profession, many of us echo the same solution of educating the public on what we do and why we do it. “If they only understood…” This week on the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast I speak with architect and teacher Stephen Chung; the creator and host of the new PBS television show, Cool Spaces! Stephen has a...

Annmarie and I launched our first website at fivecat.com in 1998, way before any other architects in the region were online. I've been writing blogs since 2006 and as social media grew in popularity, we adopted early and benefited tremendously. Having a strong online presence has made us very accessible on search engines. We've held a top 3 position on Google since launching the website...

This Episode is Top Secret In this episode of the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast, I talk about how to create your own life plan and I’ll walk you through my own business plan step-by-step; the actual plan that I developed for Fivecat Studio back in 2006. I’ll share all my previously confidential information and show you how Annmarie and I took Fivecat Studio from a struggling stalled s...

Money is critical to the success of any architecture firm, but how and why you find that money may determine whether you live or die as a small business. In this episode of the Entrepreneur Architect Podcast, we're talking about building a business without debt and if you already find yourself in the hole (like me), I will share 4 steps to find your way back to debt-zero. Please leave a revie...