From BLUEPRINTS to GREENBACKS

7Mar

By Mike HellinghausenNo Comments

It’s Elementary

This month of March is that unpredictable, yet hopeful time between winter and spring. A time for students to take a break before continuing on with their school year. For gardeners, a time of preparation. A kind of starting over. Beginning again. I'd like to spend this month in similar fashion. I want to go back to the beginning in terms of thinking (mine, at least) about the design business. Back to the basic, and yes, elementary. You may feel a bit like these kids in the picture, forced to review their times tables. My posts are brief out of respect for how little time we all have, so I prefer to break things down to bite-sized and simple. You more advanced scholars may not be as challenged this month, so for extra credit, feel free to peruse the Key Indicators, and le...

28Feb

By Mike HellinghausenNo Comments

Finance, General Interest, Operations

A Culture of Profitability

Over the years, I've presented a number of workshops on financial management for design firms, and I have often sensed a skepticism in my audiences about making a design firm consistently profitable. I think there may be a prevalent mindset that the design profession just isn’t very profitable. Case in point— the old joke that asks what a practitioner would do were he or she to win the lottery— the punch line being that the practitioner would just continue working until the money ran out. I've had people tell me that you just can't make this business profitable. Period. (more…)

21Feb

By Mike HellinghausenNo Comments

Finance, General Interest

Profit: The Air We Breathe

If we want to practice architecture, interior design, or landscape design for very long, we must find a way to make a profitable business of it. It cannot be merely a happy accident. Or an occasional thing. Profit must be the very air we breathe. I'm not advocating profit for profit's sake, mind you. But, rather, because it frees us to do our best work. It's also the difference between life and death for the firm. (more…)

14Feb

By Mike HellinghausenNo Comments

Finance, General Interest

How is the Firm Like a Project?

They can both make us crazy? No, that title really wasn't intended as the first line of a joke. But there are a couple ways that a firm is like a project for me. The first is that we are always striving to build something meaningful and lasting. It's the second one I want to talk about, because it can simplify how we think about the firm's financial management. (more…)

7Feb

By Mike Hellinghausen2 Comments

General Interest

On Duty

In this month of presidents, I'm reminded of a man who had the gravest of responsibilities thrust upon him, and never shrank from them. The fate of an entire country depended on his unwavering commitment. For me, Lincoln is a good reminder of our own serious responsibilities if we play a management role in our firms. Last week, I promised to elaborate on my belief that we also have an inherent obligation to manage our firms well. The fate of a country may not be at stake, but nevertheless, we are called to meet this obligation. (more…)

31Jan

By Mike Hellinghausen2 Comments

General Interest

The Management Imperative

I began this site with a New Year's post exhorting a renewed commitment to better firm management. I'll end this first month by explaining why I think this is so important. First of all, the stakes are high. Perhaps higher than we want to acknowledge at times. It can mean the life or death of a firm. (more…)

24Jan

By Mike HellinghausenNo Comments

General Interest

To the Manner Born

We invest years of tuition, countless studio projects, and more than a few all-nighters to become architects, interior designers, landscape architects. Years. There are times when we may doubt our ability to get there. (more…)

17Jan

By Mike Hellinghausen2 Comments

General Interest

Carpe Diem

"Will you be our COO?" When the question finally sank in, I was stunned. Speechless. It was the very last thing I expected my bosses to ask me. I'd been minding my own business since I had joined the firm, head down, doing projects, never much time to think about anything else. My first thought-- okay, second thought-- was, "I have absolutely NO qualifications for that job." My actual first thought was, "They're obviously talking to the wrong guy." (more…)

10Jan

By Mike Hellinghausen2 Comments

General Interest

Who, Me?

Many years ago, when two of my bosses took me to lunch and asked me to be the firm's COO, I experienced one of those funny sitcom episodes. The one where the guy being asked a question looks to either side, and realizes that the question is actually directed at him, not someone else. (more…)

3Jan

By Mike HellinghausenNo Comments

General Interest

The Gift of a New Year

When I was in college, 2015 was impossibly far away. When I asked my dad about the experience of raising his family of 8 children, he used to say that it had all gone by in a blur. I've now come to see exactly what he meant. He recently passed away, making me more conscious than ever of the passage of time. (more…)