Peopleverse 005: Alex Gore

📺 Watch the episode on YouTube here.

🎧 Or, listen here:

In this episode, we discuss:

• Alex’s origin story and what led to him becoming an architect
• how F9 Productions began during the 2009 recession and what baggage they left behind when starting his own firm
• F9’s beginnings and figuring out how to find work 
• F9’s foray into design/build and construction 
• F9’s 9 principles 
• how F9 has grown over the last few years
• why F9 pivoted the firm after developing their own projects
• the idea of a feedback loop informing one’s trajectory
• what Alex’s main role at F9 is today
• the definition of leadership
• how Alex created a culture of permission through mentorship
• why Alex said, “The most I know is about architecture and construction, and I’m finding out I know less and less about that every day.”
• what to do when you don’t know what you don’t know
• what exists between what architects draw (design intent) and making the building into reality
• the importance of real world experience in design and construction
• what’s missing from almost all technology solutions in AEC
• why architects can’t prescribe means and methods for contractors
• Alex’s advice for the best way to get the information you need when you need it
• how to communicate to your team for the best outcomes during an iterative process
• why human-to-human connections are underrated
• how technology can help the most in AEC by mimicking reality
• what kind of lunch and learns bring the most value to architectural firms
• Alex’s message to the building industry regarding government bureaucracy that affects an architects ability to offer their services
• a peek into the life of an architect to help building product reps understand their day-to-day

Episode links:

• Alex on Twitter 
• Alex on LinkedIn 
• F9 Productions on Twitter 
• F9 Productions on LinkedIn 
• F9 Productions website 
• Inside the Firm Podcast 
• Evan’s episodes as a guest on the Inside the Firm podcast (episode 8 | episode 69)
• The Creativity Code by Alex Gore 
• CU Boulder’s Architectural Engineering program 
• Wait but Why blog by Tim Urban
• Tim Urban on Twitter 
• Tim Urban’s tweet with past and future paths diagram 
• Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech (connecting the dots) (YouTube)
• Steve Jobs Secrets of Life (YouTube)

Episode Transcription:

Evan Troxel

Welcome to Peopleverse. I'm your host, Evan Troxel. And I'm an architect. Peopleverse is a show where I talk with people throughout the building industry to unearth authentic stories from interesting people to entertain and inspire. You might have heard of the metaverse. Well, we're doing something different here. In many ways, the building industry is still very much like the Wild West.

Even in a time when technology and data are abundant. Peopleverse explores the people and the stories behind the projects, to remind us why we got into this industry in the first place, and to build relationships along the way. This show is brought to you by Tect. And you can learn more about what we're doing to connect the supply and demand sides of the building industry tect.com And you can learn more about Peopleverse peopleverse.fm.

In this episode, I welcome architect Alex gore. Alex Gore is a badass architect in this is an Alex's own words, principal and co-owner of the firm F9 Productions and the build firm F14 Productions, co host of the podcast Inside the Firm, which I have been lucky enough to have been a guest on once or twice the author of The Creativity Code.

He also teaches in the Architectural Engineering Department at CU Boulder, which is in Colorado, which is where Alex practices. But most importantly, he is a friend of mine. And Alex and my paths have crossed a few times. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's great. I am so happy that you're on Peopleverse. So welcome to the Peopleverse!

Alex Gore

Thanks for inviting me, Stephen Colbert. I mean, Evan Troxel. Have you gotten that yet? You look like No,

Evan Troxel

I haven't really I do. Put out a lot of content though.

Alex Gore

You look like Stephen Colbert. Maybe it's just I wouldn't have said let me be a couple of years ago. But

Evan Troxel

now it's my glasses. Yeah. The glass. I said to you before, I mean, I wore black for you today. You're the first architect on this show. We've got to represent. Yep, it has to be the uniform. The uniform is real. This Yeah. The glasses are part of the uniform. Colbert is he? I think he he owes architects some royalties on that. Yeah, maybe? Because yeah, he does have cool spec for sure. All right. So I read your bio, I would love it. If you could tell us a story from your childhood that looking back predicted what you do for a living today, which is I know, multifaceted. And I would love to kind of have you paint that picture. But let's go way back. And like where did all this start?

Alex Gore

Yeah, it actually starts at some of my first memories. And I don't know how common this is or not, because I have a couple brothers and a sister. And when I was growing up, I would draw ants versus bees. And then I would draw pirate ships fighting each other. And then pretty early on, I would start to my grandma would give me huge sheets back of calendars, because my grandpa worked at a State Farm. And you know, back in the day, you had large calendars on the wall. So when they are done, you know, it's a huge seat to draw on.

And I would draw cities just like from a top view, just obviously making this up. And then spate in spaceships and airplanes. And I would draw library plans and elevations and like, just I have binders and folders full of drawings that I should probably throw away. And don't do it. My grandma and my mom would always like, you know, when parents would talk like, oh, Alex is going to be an architect. So I don't know, if I had a choice. I think it was just pushed into me.

Yeah, but I don't think it was unwarranted, you know, I think it was was always there. And I had to remind myself, I teach students, some of them are amazing. Some of them are a little bit raw, and when they aren't doing for plants correctly, and you know, they're 20 Some years old, I get frustrated. And then I have to realize, like, I literally look back at a notebook at sixth grade, where proportionally, you know, not to toot my own horn, but proportionally like it was laid out pretty well. And that's just a total different mindset.

I don't know if people are drawing libraries, you know, at sixth grade. And maybe they are but I just always, always knew what I was going to be and always knew what I was going to do. So I was very, very lucky in that sense.

Evan Troxel

So I have a question here, because I have a I have a story that's, you know, in a similar vein, but was this something that you were developing the plans by experiencing these places spatially? Or was it just what you thought was going on? Or, or were you like seriously into like plan books and magazines and things like that my

Alex Gore

mom had a million of those for planned books. graves was one of the architects, I don't know if you remember, but he had a bunch of floor plans. So I knew that. And then I would be cognizant when going around. And then right around that middle school era, my grandma would take me and my brothers on vacation, and we would go see old historic buildings, too, because she just knew that that was a thing, you know.

I mean, sometimes we'd go to fun places, traditionally. As opposed to, as opposed to literally just touring, you know, buildings, which was fun to me. I don't know what my brothers thought about this whole situation. But that was what was happening. So

Evan Troxel

clearly, you were the favorite.

Alex Gore

Thank you. Thank you. I will tell them that next time. Yeah. Even though I think they love my sister the most. But what are you going to do?

Evan Troxel

My story is, is this is similar in that like, Man, I would devour those plan books that like, go to be Dalton bookseller, right in the mall. It was right above Walden books, they were on different floors, but my mom and dad read a lot, mostly my mom. And I would sit in the magazine section. And I would look for those House plan magazines. And I would just memorize those things. And like you, I was drawing plans, I actually loved grid paper.

As a kid, I wasn't so much the blank sheet of, you know, non grid paper, regular paper. And, and that was just what I did, I would say that I would sit at a table, I told a story on an earlier show that I would sit out in the front yard and build houses out of rocks to like that was my main like Flintstone houses for my little tacos and my Matchbox cars and hot wheels and stuff. And so I kind of had this, you know, this Lego slash rock house building mindset. But I also had, I was very much like, pencil and paper, and plans, like you're saying, like just plans and play iterations.

So tell us what you're doing now. And I said before, I alluded to the fact that it's multifaceted, but you guys are doing a lot. So we mentioned F nine and F 14 In the intro of your your bio, but tell us what F nine is all about, and what f 14 and any other thing that you're kind of working on. Because I think it's it's important to tell the whole story here like you are super entrepreneurial. And you're also an author, you're a podcaster. So there's so many facets to this to owl, I want you to kind of paint the whole picture here.

Alex Gore

f9 started, essentially because of the recession. So I was working out for Daniel leap skin and then 2008 happened. Everyone in my age group was basically laid off or close to laid off. And Lance was in the same boat.

Evan Troxel

So just tell everybody who Lance is real quick. Lance,

Alex Gore

Psycho is my junior business partner.

Evan Troxel

I guess he's one of you. Is the President in which ones to see I

Alex Gore

think it changes every three years. Apparently, we're 5050. But what since he's not here, he's Junior. In this scenario.

Evan Troxel

He's the what is it? The assistant to the assistant. Exactly,

Alex Gore

exactly. And he lost his job about the same time working for a great firm. And no one was hiring. I mean, absolutely no one was hiring. So we just basically had to get our own work. And we could get our own work, we had a little bit of construction knowledge. All throughout college, I only had one traditional job. And a second one I was in the National Guard.

But that was unrelated to, you know, architecture. But it because of the National Guard, I'd always have to spend two to three weeks, somewhere around the world doing whatever. So it's very hard in three months to take off almost a month. So I would just find work to do architecture work somehow. So we we kind of kicked that into full gear. And we started getting work. And we didn't have enough really to sustain myself. But I had four grand back in the day. And I said there's nothing else going on.

So this is this is what we're doing. You know, that's what it takes right there. Yep. And then we just slowly started building up from residential houses to pot shops because it's Colorado to then multifamily to now 100 unit complexes master plans, I mean, we're not a big firm by any stretch of the imagination. But compared to where we started f9 has now grown into about 10 people on the architecture side, three people on the construction side and one admin person. So around 14 total. And the architecture started out and then it morphed, and I learned this from leaves can is that you can justify the end results later.

Post justification was justification works at the architect's life right there. And initially F nine was it was the render key first 3d Studio Max so it was like These are the only productions that we have, you know. So that's what we were producing. But then it slowly morphed into because immediately will literally probably like first day when when Lance and I were really juicing it up was, we have an opportunity to rethink what and how to do it.

And it all started with Revit. And it was okay, if we're going to do this, we don't have to bring in any legacy programs, you know, any legacy practices, I talked to some people now who are talking Revit. And they're talking about all these different view options and things probably you even know more than me about. And I'm not trying to get into those weeds. But we took a whole different approach of is like, how can we mimic construction?

And how can we make a template so that our firm can be efficient, because it's a recession, we have to do four editions to make up for one house. And that house might not even be there. And it might be five additions. And that means you're dealing with five clients, five permits set five city submittals, five reviews. In the recession, it was great.

The city review, since they wanted stuff to build would give like no comment, and then all sudden, like, it's not a recession. And they have a whole bunch of comments. And you're like, What are you doing, guys? What are you doing, you know, justifying Exactly. Where before that I can't please build, somehow none of those failed out who knew?

And so we were able to really focus on that, and then really kind of explore, because we were so fresh, not only on how do we produce, but how we get work. So a lot of people get work from word of mouth. And from referrals. Well, again, so young, you know, we know no one. So then we have to advertise. So how's inefficient way to advertise? Some architecture firms don't do heavy on the advertisement.

But we had to so then we made that into a system. Asking clients, why did they pick us? And one of the best stories was the first client I landed, super young, super inexperienced. I knew about eight people going after this one job. And they said, You're on time professional. And in the end you over delivered. I go that's everyone right now I got they laughed in my face.

Evan Troxel

You thought everyone was like you? Yeah,

Alex Gore

well, I you know, just sometimes humility works for you. And what I'm getting at is that this finally evolved into what we have codified into nine principles, F nine, nine foundational principles that everyone at our firm knows that everyone knows is sort of the 10 commandments of like, Hey, if you break those, you know, it's not. We're not saying it's fireable offense, but like, it's not like you didn't know about it, not like you didn't know, it wasn't expected. You know,

Evan Troxel

yeah, it's like a shared values kind of job, right? It's like expectations.

Alex Gore

Exactly. And that's been our kind of Cornerstone in different areas. And essentially, that has led to another thing that I stole from bleep skin was. He said, do one fun project a year, like your own makeup craziness. And we started doing that early. And one of the things we did is we designed a tiny house. And then we built the tiny house on the fly. And that became kind of the start of the construction art. And then you named your son after him. Right? Yeah. Well, it's, it's funny, because it's complicated. It's complicated.

My son's name is Atlas. And it came to me in a dream. And we could never pick a name and finally went with that. But I also thought in the meantime, while he was baking, the tiny house and I was like, we didn't know we were going to name them that. And I was like, well, that's such a cool name. Like I might as well team name, that tiny house set. And then my wife said that I could name the kid that so I was like, Okay, this is happening.

So which came first? Yeah, in my mind, it was a kid first, but it wasn't it wasn't approved through the right, you know, process yet. It had to get verified and checked and all that, right. So there's two atlases one is inanimate, and the other one is very adamant. And then a big fortune 500 company had us build bigger ones that could transform and were super cool, and modern architecture and glass and all this stuff. And then we use that money. So that was the construction start. And we bought a piece of land. And we thought, hey, we're gonna develop now.

So then we designed it, and built it, and funded it. And I'm in that office right now, there's eight other units that are part of that. And we literally thought that we were just keep going. It's like, after you build eight units or nine, depending on how you count it, like, Let's build 18 Let's build 20 Let's build 24. Let's build 36, stuff like that. And we pivoted after that. We learned our lesson. And it's not that that's not a good model.

Don't follow, but essentially with the way that the city permitting works. And the way that the market can fluctuate so much is you start day one with your idea and buying the land, like that's your start point, because that's money goes in. And honestly, even a project of nine, it's, it's your three, you get it out, as we know, and this was even before this was before COVID, three years before COVID is a large fluctuation, three years after COVID is a huge fluctuation. So there's a huge risk.

And there is a reward to that. But we, some clients, you know, saw our stuff, and they obviously worked through the architecture process, and they were in the buildings, and we obviously say we built this. And they're like, Well, why don't you build our house? Why don't you build our project? And if it's within range, and if they're cool clients, it's like, why wouldn't we, you know, build their house and build their project. And they're basically funded, they're basically approved client, it's almost guaranteed money.

That didn't work out in the last one that we we just kind of did. But we're like, this is just a safer, and it's smaller. So if we do two or three of these, it might not equal the total of the big one. But the security of it is better and worth it. So we transitioned into into that kind of mode just building for our clients, rather than doing our own development. It's not to say we won't do our own development in the future. And I think we probably will.

But I think everyone thinks everything is a sort of linear path. And you've, you've might have even seen, Evan, that. It's some sort of mean, and it's like, oh, here's what people think it is, you know, a path from lower left to upper right. Here's what it really is, is like, a very, you know, like, there's pitfalls and things like Exactly, yeah, but I would say there's a third meme where it's like, you start off off that path, and then you you break the wall, and you go, like, in a totally different direction. And that can include

Evan Troxel

it's, it's Pink Floyd like the the prism with the the light coming in and the rainbow coming out? Yep. Yep. Every fraction. Yeah, exactly. I was thinking as you're telling this story, and I don't mean to interrupt it, because, but this comes to mind, it's come to mind. In many occasions, it's a quote that stuck with me, which is you, it's a Steve Jobs, quote, you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward.

So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. Yeah. And I think about like, when you're doing these crazy projects, the one offs that Liebeskind inspired you to do like me, you've got that Amazon tower, when Amazon was talking, talking about shopping around and go into different cities, you proposed one in Denver, you guys got a lot of press out of that. You started building Atlas, then you ended up, like you said, that was a start of the construction, then you ended up doing your own development.

There's no way back then you saw those different things coming. But now you can actually see how one thing led to another and you, you can kind of see how the dots connect. And I think that that's something especially for like the student audience of the show. There, you need to trust that these things do bleed somewhere they and even if they seemingly lead nowhere, they're still going to influence what happens in the future. Right. And that is leading somewhere.

Alex Gore

Yes. And I think when you're looking forward and looking ahead, and especially when you said a student, or anyone kind of planning is a principle that governs life is, is the idea of a feedback loop. And it's a feedback loop and conversation and drawings and clients in the economy and war and everything. And you have a plan and you send it forward. And you don't know if that's going to come back and hit you in the face, or be a rope that you can hang on to and go forward. So that that feedback loop will force you through different areas. And then just like John says, In the end, you can see all that feedback loop made a trail. But it wasn't necessarily the idea that you had going forward. Right?

Evan Troxel

There's a great there's a great diagram by Tim urban, who has a huge Twitter following. And he writes for The New York Times this amazing blog called Wait, but why? I'll try to remember to put put a link to it in the show notes. But he has this diagram of like this sideways looking root system of your starting here. There's all these potential futures coming off of that.

And you end up taking one of those like right now you're looking forward and you might see one future you might see four futures you might see 20 potential futures and when you get to the end of that timeline, you will be able to draw the path that you actually took, but you can't foresee the exact path until you get there and then guess what, at that point, it does it again, right like it's always Doing that there's always these potential futures based on actions and challenges and opportunities and all these things. And it's like one step at a time. Right? And if you do you are able to look backwards and see it. But there it's practically impossible. Looking forward.

Alex Gore

How do you feel about the past not taken? Because I know that

Evan Troxel

you feel like like you're missing out like the FOMO. Yeah, the FOMO. So,

Alex Gore

you know, your path has been, you have had a path, you know, and I

Evan Troxel

never saw this never saw me being the media mogul that I am today. Exactly. Exactly. It's all the microphone just makes it sound good. But no, I think about that a lot. And I also think I've said this many times in the past, I'm living five lives at the same time. I honestly feel like, you get one, right? And so it looks to people and it looks to me, like I'm doing a lot, right. I've got three different shows. I work full time, I've got a family, like, we travel, try. I

t's like squeeze it all in, man. Because you don't get to do this all the time. You won't get to do this forever. It's kind of like, you know, I was listening to this other podcast and get get it while the getting's good is one way to say it, right? It's like, I am able, I'm not gonna wait until I'm retired to do the fun stuff. I'm gonna do the fun stuff now too. Right? And, and to me, I just, I actually just recently changed my Twitter bio. And I just included this one little thing. Like, I've always been a really curious person and a very observant person, but I just said, like, I'm still learning, right. And I feel like that's what this is. It's just I'm curious.

My curiosity leads to me wanting to try to do all these things. I know. Another Steve Jobs thing, right? He said, like, once, once you figure out that everything ever made in the world has been made by another person. Just like you, you can do it too. And I've always felt like, yeah, I should try. I should. I shouldn't just outsource that to somebody else. I should try to do it myself. Yeah. And you do learn what you don't like to do. Like, it's not all great. Right? But I feel like all that experience makes me I mean, it. It's by definition, it makes me who I am. So I think that actually makes me a better architect makes me a better designer to have experienced and have done all that stuff.

Alex Gore

No, it's a kick in the butt thought too. Is that everything you want to do? Someone worse than you have already done?

Evan Troxel

You know what I mean? Interesting way to put it.

Alex Gore

Yeah. So if you don't think you know, you can do it or whatever. I bet you if someone was asking you, you know, Hey, should I do this? Blah, blah? I don't have it. Not that you would say this way or me? Yeah, there's someone that's the worst, you know, isn't as good as thinker isn't as diligent, and they're doing it. So why can't you write that? We've all dealt with shitty products, shitty customer service, shitty solutions. So they exist.

Evan Troxel

Yeah, totally. What is your role on the projects that you're doing? So I sent you guys do a lot. And I think we should even talk about because one of the things you said firms do marketing, and they do they do advertising, right. But you guys have taken a bit of a different approach by creating products that may be put out there who you are, and give people an opportunity to just know you guys a little bit better with the podcast and with the book and things in the Revit course, and the Developer course, and the templates, like you've, you've got your fingers out, like I said earlier, you're very entrepreneurial group. And so what do you actually do nowadays?

Alex Gore

That's a rough question.

Evan Troxel

I mean, it's kind of like me, it's like, you kind of do a lot of it. Right?

Alex Gore

Yeah. So the main goal, I think, is, is is feeding and then clearing the plate. So feeding in the sense of what business is coming in? How can we get that business? How can we feed the firm, for all the people that are employed here and do great work? And then after that is, how can I clear the way of what information do you need?

What offset goals are in your way? For the building side, what supplies do you need? What knowledge do you need? That is essentially, in the broader sense what I do we could get nitpicky of, you know, what I actually do and it would vary from laying out a complex to picking up picking up what am I thinking of picking up hanger ties for a construction project, you know, but it's in that general sense have kind of those two buckets of is how I look at it, do whatever

Evan Troxel

needs to be done. Yeah. I mean, that's interesting to think about it as like feeding and then cleaning the plate because I had a mentor when I was working at Apple of all places, and he said, you know, like, he saw potential in me and he said, You could do whatever you want. He goes, I need you to let me know what that is. So that I can clear the plate so that I can get through the red tape and get out of your way. Yes. And that was the definition, the first time I'd ever heard a clear definition of leadership.

Alex Gore

That is a great way to put it. And I feel the same way is that these are capable people. Why why bog them down? Why not? Why not let them run free, if they can, with certain guide rails, revisions, reviews. And it goes back to the kind of content that we make. We make it for ourselves, we make it for the people in the farm. And it's with the technology today, it's why not do a couple more buttons and make that available to everyone. And that goes back to the the feedback loop to have. We were very keen on having a quick feedback loop in the firm, and then also providing it back out to the community.

Evan Troxel

So you're iterating on these products, like the template thing, the content, things like that, that is that feedback loop, you're always making it better, and is doing that as quickly as you can so that everybody gets better all at the same time.

Alex Gore

And it's not always run through Lancer i. We have five minute morning meetings where one person takes one every day. And there's five points. And it's about a minute each and each little topic. Well, you know, what's a problem that you've had? What, what's a win that you've had? What's a process improvement that you've had, and I'm sure I'm missing a couple of them, right? They're written down, everyone knows when they do it.

And a lot of you don't have to remember because they're written exactly, exactly. And a lot of the solutions will be, you've probably experienced this, you're modeling or someone in your team is modeling something, and you don't have a glass garage door, you know, you just don't have one in your library. And it could be anything, or one of the models doesn't flex. And it just stays there for years and years.

But people know that they have to present every two weeks, because that's kind of the cycle is like, Oh, let me just go fix that quick. You know, and it's every day one person is fixing one small thing or adding one thing that's helpful. And that's how the feedback loop but also clearing things out of the way and making it a process. It's a process of clearing and engaging so that people can do again, feed themselves and get things actually done. You guys

Evan Troxel

actually have a culture of permission for that kind of a thing. Right? So it's like fix it now so that we don't have to worry about it ever again. Yeah, right. And where there's very much a different culture in many firms, which is like, if you can just throw a bandaid on that.

For now, that'd be great, right? Like, because time is the most valuable thing we have a lot of people take that to the extreme and say, don't, don't fix it. Now. Don't build your time to this project, right? Because then we can't be as, quote unquote, profitable. But the funny thing is like, then you'll actually never get more profitable on those kinds of things, because you're not fixing it now for future people and future projects. Exactly.

Alex Gore

That's a great way to look at it, because then it's just gonna come up again, and again. And again,

Evan Troxel

I'm really interested in this quote that I found on your Instagram feed. And what it says is, the most I know is about architecture and construction. And I'm finding out I know less and less about that every day. Before you before you say where that came from. I mean, this is something that that we talk about, at Tect a lot, which is, we're all right, we're set up from the start through our education, to own all of it as the architect, right, the one who is in charge of this whole process.

And because of that, because we get so self sufficient in school, because we have all of our own projects that we have to produce everything on our own, right, all the drawings, all the modeling, all the physical models, do the presentation, take all the critique. And and it's it's personal. In that way, like it rarely is a team project, then you get out in the real world. And surprise, everything's a team project, right?

But we still have these tendencies to go it alone. And what we say at Tect is like stop going it alone, man. There's amazing amount of knowledge. There's an amazing amount of experiences and wisdom that are out there and it's encapsulated in all these different places and you can have access to it right when you need it. That's important.

I'm sure you've experienced this a lot, doing all of the things that you've done doing it to development, doing construction, moving through different project types from residential to these multi unit things. There is no way to know everything about everything. So how could you and I think it's appropriate your quote, right, it's like, I'm finding out there's, I know less than less of the whole of the total, every day. And that that is kind of an interesting perspective. Again, I think about students, right.

And I think about when they're just starting their career, and they're being programmed in school now to do it all, when in fact, it's like, we have to rely on so many others. And I just wanted to kind of go ahead and explain the quote, where that came from. And then maybe you can talk about, like, some, we've what I just took into into your own story and your own path.

Alex Gore

Yeah, I don't know how that got out there, maybe on our podcast, but I think I have an idea of why I said it. So for example, I might use you in this example, I don't know all of your knowledge. But if you play along, it might work out as well, residential architect, building a house, drawing a bunch of them, you know, you might have some familiarity with it. Let's say you're gonna frame that house. Well, you've seen framing, you've been to a job site all the time. Evan, do you know how to erect and put up roof trusses? No way, man.

Evan Troxel

But YouTube, it's on YouTube.

Alex Gore

It's kind of odd to YouTube. So like, this is a very fundamental thing. Like many, many people put up roof trusses, I've seen them put up. We've put up walls, we put up floor trusses, things like that. And we get to the roof trusses? And it's like, oh, all these tails don't line up. What's going on? Okay, we have to cut them back. Oh, they're not lining up in the vertical plane also. Okay, what's happening there? Oh, we have to do ladder framing for overhangs.

I've seen them before and that, but like, it's never really specified. What kind of hangers do we need? Are we over strapping on top of it? What about the level? What's the tolerance? What's the tolerance over 20 feet over 10 feet? You know, are we making sure that we have the spacing? Like there's an eighth inch spacing between each sheathing board on top for swelling for when it gets damp? And it's it's going to happen? And all of these are they seem like right now I probably seem like I know what I'm talking about. But all of those were, wait, what is the right answer? Is it an eighth image? What

Evan Troxel

like all of those were hard?

Alex Gore

What it sounds like exactly, and it was all. And then also to the extent of we have the trust plans right there. It's like God just follow the trust plants? Well, there's this little symbol on each side of the trusses. And we know that we're going to do hurricane clips. And then I call it the trust guy. And it's like, what are the symbols? It's like, I don't know, no one's ever asked before.

Well, you're the trust manufacturer. What are these symbols? He's like, I don't know, let me get back to you. Another thing to like trust is they connect? What's the bracing pattern? What's temporary bracing pattern? What's the permanent bracing pattern? How when there's trusses that are lined up every two foot and center, but also there's a ridge in the center, you know, a ridge in between them? How are you framing so that the sheeting comes together and connects to those? What? And some of these? I did know, right? But some of I did it all? I don't know how many questions that was 10 Maybe 15. Right?

It's all sudden I go into a day. I know architecture, I know how to build, build things before. And then I realize holy cow, I don't really, really really know the answer. I don't really, really for sure know the answer to this whole

Evan Troxel

thing spent a decade in those trades. Yeah. As an apprentice Yeah. And that's where it came from. It's interesting, because architects draw design intent. They don't draw, they draw contract documents. Right? A lot of people call those construction documents. But those are actually two different things, right. And so there is so much knowledge that we depend upon to translate those drawings into reality. Right?

So design intent and reality are still two very different things. And there, it just shows the importance of every piece of the puzzle. And I think there's a lot of fed up architects out there who've worked with a lot of crappy contractors, and vice versa, like to be totally fair. But you have to acknowledge that that experience is important and useful. And that it, it has a huge amount of meaning when it comes to actually getting something built. And that is the stuff that I think, you know, on my one of my other shows, I talked about technology all the time.

That's the stuff that's not in the technology, right? That is the stuff that you're talking about that is not in Revit, right? Like there might be a plugin to do structural framing layouts for roofs, roof decks or whatever. But there's so many things not in there and it's not because you can't put it in there. Maybe you could, but it's because it doesn't need To be in there, because that's not what the purpose the drawings are serving the drawings are trying to get a permit. Yeah, right.

And they're also the IKEA version of a construction set, right? They're like, this is what it needs to look like in the end. And architects are, you cannot dictate means and methods. Because if you do, then you're getting into somebody else's job. And then you're taking on that risk. And there's a clear separation,

Alex Gore

the liability insurance is way more costly. So if you are basically telling them how to do their job, but you're not taking on that liability risk, and then you get sued, and they're, they're like, hey, the architect does exactly how to do it, and how to perform it. Your insurances are gonna go, What the hell did you just do? I because we pay both insurances. And I can tell you that construction insurance is five to eight times higher. Wow. You know,

Evan Troxel

yep. So, but so as the the percentage of profit? Maybe. So, when you do come up against these things that you never saw coming, right? Like, what does this symbol mean, on the framing on the truss? Plan? What how do you brace it? Like whatever those things were? How do you get that information? Because it's not like you need to have learned that in school necessarily.

Like, there's, there's another there's a lot of finger pointing that goes on within the profession of architecture, which is like I wish schools would teach more what it's actually like to practice, schools like to focus on design and problem solving and learning how to think and, and architecture students go through a hell of a lot of effort to, to transform themselves into being that kind of a person, there isn't time to learn everything, right?

And then there's this, this idea that we have, which is like, I just need to know it when I need to know it. I don't need to know it 10 years in advance, I don't need to know it one year in advance, because if I do, I'll probably forget or it'll change or whatever. So what was your approach when it came to finding ways to learn the right way to do things when you needed to?

Alex Gore

There's the easy way and the hard way. And we obviously did it the hard slash stupid way. It depends on which trade we learned. But now the lesson has been reinforced enough that we know to transition to the easy way. So the hard way first, like you just said, and we didn't do this initially. A lot of people think you can get so much information from YouTube. But also every YouTube video, they're doing something specific in a specific region,

Evan Troxel

you're getting their interpretation of the right way to do it, too, right? Like you're you, there's so many teachers out there, you can pick one, but you could also learn all the other ways to do it, too.

Alex Gore

And like, for example, there, there's someone over framing. And after framing the goal, while our engineer wouldn't let that fly, like there, we couldn't even so it's like, even if we did learn from YouTube and do it that way, well, then we would have had to add things, tear some things down. So that's not the greatest. And we did do. It's like we did a combination of all these solutions. One is, you know, asked to trust manufacturer.

The other one is always have good relationships with other subs and other GCS. Those were the best information, calling GL or calling Brian and saying like, hey, what do you guys do here? And he's like, doo doo doo, you know, just do this. And then we can make that fly, but you don't want to over bother them, right? So it is a lot of if you're gonna do it the hard way.

It's lookup information, see if you can try to do it. Ask a rep. But not too much that you piss them off, and then ask contractors or other subs so that you don't piss them off to write and then know that you're learning something new and communicate to your team that like, this might be difficult, we might have to redo some stuff. But it's okay. What before I get to the easy way, one of the most brilliant things I think Elon Musk has done?

If you could, I bet you it wouldn't even be in your top 10 of things that Elon Musk has done, but because you could say so many different things from the car. And if you I don't even know if you have a Tesla, like you could go into the nuances of what he's done with the car and the spaceship and things like that. One of the most brilliant things I think he ever did is when they are making this new starship. If you follow it, they have made multiple iteration.

I think they're on number nine, probably after F nine as a homage to us. I'm pretty sure that's right. But some of them they blow up some of them they literally just scrap and why I think this is so brilliant is not because what people think is like, Oh, we're moving fast. And you know, like learning from mistakes. I think that's only part of it. workers get extremely, extremely pissed. If you tell them simply like, Hey, do this, and they do that and then you say, that's wrong. redo it. You're like, Well, you told me to do it. And now you're telling me to redo it and then they redo it.

If you have to say Ah, do that again. They're getting even more pissed. So the brilliant thing is like, Hey, we're gonna make this one team can. Maybe we'll fly it, maybe we won't. And maybe we'll blow up. And then, oh, they did that wrong. And maybe it was a boss telling them to do it wrong. That one gets thrown in the trash. And obviously, like, this isn't wasteful, because they're gonna make a whole bunch of you know, later.

Oh, now you're making a new one. Right? Oh, now I learned something. I'm gonna weld this better. Or, Hey, someone gave me another idea. Or, or I even looked this up on YouTube, and I'm gonna make it better. Rather than here's a rocket ship, we got to make sure this works. Oh, you did something. Oh, tear that apart and redo it. Nine times you're going to drive people absolutely nuts. So that was just an as an aside, so it be as you can obviously can't do that all the time.

So the easier way to do it is whatever trade you're doing BS, we've done drywall, we've done framing, we've done roofing, we've done all this other stuff is get that mentor in there. For the first time throughout the whole phase of that roofing is actually not that hard. So like, we just did that. But like even drywall, get someone that's done drywall and have them walk them through it, there's going to be little weird things.

Hey, is this bumper acceptable? Is this coverage acceptable? You know, like, how do we do this? Is it supposed to be this dirty? Yes, you know, those million questions. So that's the easier cheat code is like, okay, know that you might not even be profitable that first time. But you need that person there that seasoned veteran to literally say, in framing like, it's rough framing, a 16th of an inch gap in what is what are you talking about? Yes, no big move and police.

Evan Troxel

But your drawings? Yeah, yeah,

Alex Gore

you're trying to show a gap 16th of an inch gap? Well,

Evan Troxel

what what I see is the theme, and I'm I'm so glad that this is the theme because this aligns totally with our message here. So I'm it's self serving that I saw this theme. But it's, it's people like people is the theme. And you talked about mentors. You talked about getting a supervisor you talked about getting, you actually said the word relationship.

And you also talked about, it's important to balance that and not like overburden the relationship, right? Because you don't you want that person to pick up the phone when you call so that you don't want them ghosting you not picking up when you call.

So don't overburden them. Okay, so So one of the things that we see happening all the time in the industry now, is this, this push towards technology and the push towards data. And, you know, just Google it. Oh, it's on the website. And you know, there's a lot of problems with that, that that information is outdated, pretty fast. It doesn't always get updated.

In many cases, it's hard to get to the right person, like you guys are in Colorado, like you don't necessarily want to or need to talk to a rep from California, because it's total. Yeah, you're like, No, please, please. No. Right. And so reality becomes important. But you need the right person at the right time, with the right information.

And the importance of building that network. This this kind of, again, ties back to the students but but we said you know, you are going to be you are being taught to go it alone. But it's actually very important to build this network to build a people network. And that's where the name of the show comes from, where people vote. That's what the Peopleverse is, it's a network of your people. And the idea behind that is that you call upon the people you need to talk to right when you need them.

And and even if they don't have the answer, like your trust guy said, I'll find out what it means. No one's ever asked that. They don't have to have all the answers. You don't have to have all the answers. But chances are they know somebody who does. And that is I love that that came up as a theme in everything that you just talked about. Because it reinforces our mission to connect people and be the facilitator of that, like our industry. Because I'm an architect, because you're an architect, again, we were trained to be self sufficient.

It's, I would almost rather Google for something, right? But where will that path lead? I have no idea. If I make a phone call to somebody that I trust who I know works in a trade or I could call you and you could point me to somebody and get the answer faster and kind of outsource that. That is gets you what you need when you need it. And we can be on our way and move to the next thing so that I don't have to know everything about everything because you just back to your quote that I found on Instagram.

Like, the more I the more I know, the more I know what that I don't know. And that is that is a reality that I think people should get used to and just accept and then use the right resources. And so the importance of building that network and building those relationships is important. And I know you guys at f9 have done a lot of work to build. I mean this is the true definition of marketing which is you put yourselves out there you talk about what you do so that when somebody gets that message, they're ready to say yes to you.

And instead of being reactive, and putting out proposals and going after specific jobs, you guys are putting out a bunch of content, you're putting out libraries, you're putting out, podcasts, you're putting out competition entries, all of these things that just get eyeballs looking at you so that when they need something like that, they can say, Oh, f9, like they're in your, in the memory. So I love this idea that you're kind of proactive about all of that stuff. How strategic has that been for you?

Alex Gore

So on the same vein of technology, and maybe not specific to your question, so you can steer me back there later. But you had a you had a tweet, and it was about mentorship, and what technology can help that. And I kind of gave a snarky answer, but I knew that you knew who I was. So like, he's like, Evan won't take this the wrong way.

And I said basically, that I think it's I think, connection, human to human connection in office, personal connection is very underrated. And if we lose that you won't even know what you lost. And it could gum up the system more than we know. And the reason I said that immediately after your tweet is because someone at our staff, we're talking to a client, and we're talking about interior designers, right?

We need an interior designer for this project. And we need a really good one. It's a really high end product. And we walk upstairs and Lance is literally bragging about some interior designer. And I literally just like Ross and I look at each other, and we're like, bam, who did he just say? Let's get that person. Right. Right. And to relate this back. I don't know if you ever used to go to NDSU football, I know it's smaller time football, but it's big time culture up there. And they're a decent football program.

So they have a following. If you would ever go into ESPN used to have a chat feature. And it was anonymous. You didn't have to link it to anything. And it was absolutely brutal. It was hilarious and brutal, and probably everything wrong, you know, with name calling that you could imagine, right? Which I found hilarious. But it was toxic, right? You look at Twitter and Facebook. And I don't think I don't know if people would describe them as toxic.

But I would because I think it's the lesser of what that ESPN chat was that they got rid of. And what I'm getting at is that the to your question of what technology is going to help is going to be the technology that helps us interact better, and go back to f9. Mimic reality more just like we mimic construction in the process. So example this this podcast. I mean, it'd be even better if we are in person come out anytime you want. fly me out. Let me know you come here. Yeah, well, I've been there.

That is fair, fair. But I can see your face. So when I made the joke about Stephen Colbert, you know, you smiled, it's fun, you know, if if there would have been some sort of grimace back Oh, so I can't mess with heaven. As much as I thought maybe my jokes aren't as funny as I thought, you know, whatever that might be. But because I can see you, that interaction keeps going back and forth. And just like at the job site, you know, the telephone has technology,

FaceTime is technology, any app that builds on top of that, that can somehow relate, you know, it'd be great. This is maybe way in the future. But like, if I can take a picture or a FaceTime of the trusses that I'm asking a question about and it's going to the engineer, if that could the link to the Revit model. And he has on his computer exactly where I'm talking about because a lot of times he'll ask me what grid line that's at. And I'd be like, Oh, let me go run back to

Evan Troxel

the floor. Like there's no grid lines.

Alex Gore

Yep. But if somehow that you know linked in some sort of magical technology fashion, holy cow, we are mimic reality because now the structural engineers they're sort of so that was a roundabout. Don't know how we got there.

Evan Troxel

I love it. I love it my my prodding. They're like, Well, I think I said, Well, technology magically solve this if there's no tongue in cheek emoji, but that's what a lot of people think is the answer. My question was specifically in regards to the previous episode of this that we just released where I had sharees Lakeside on and she's a specifier.

She's a senior specifier and we talked about the kind of the lack of mentorship that exists within the specifications. Role of this industry, right, this the specifier is the old stodgy, gray haired dude hunched over in the corner who everybody ignores because like nobody goes to architecture school to become a specifier. I mean, if if that does happen, it's very rare.

Very, very rare, right? You're a unicorn if that's you, but the thing about that is, it's like, well, what are we doing about that? And The question then is do people think that smarter software is the answer because those people are never going to come? They might legitimately think that, but I totally agree with you. It is not like, like we talked about it a minute ago, right, that this knowledge, this experience is not encapsulated in the app. It is not encapsulated in the program. It's not in the database. It's not in the product information itself. It's not in the spec, right.

Like, it's, there's just so many places where that idea falls apart. And the answer actually, is people and so then, you know, I, I hope that this becomes a conversation on Twitter, about that, I want to get to that point where it's like, it's painfully obvious that the specifiers and the firm leadership that are out there, have to recognize that people are the answer to this problem. And you have to start identifying and cultivating whether that's from within or from outside to attract that kind of talent and show that it's meaningful and necessary.

And it needs to get maybe sexier for that to happen. But like specs aren't going away, right there half of the contract documents, right? So nobody wants to, nobody wants to say that out loud. We'd rather ignore this problem, because it's not my problem, right? It's not your problem. It's somebody else's problem, right? Well, the truth is no, like, it's our professions problem. And software can do some of it, but it can't do all of it. And so like, yeah, I work for a tech company, but I don't, we're using it to connect people. I'm not using it to augment to do basically AI on your specs, right.

, that's not the goal. So I totally agree. It is all about people. And it's all about mentorship and relationships, and apprenticeships and internships and all of those chips that you want to talk about, like whatever the right word of of the decade is. But like that's the kind of stuff that actually needs to purposefully happen within the profession. And we can talk about all the other roles where that's not happening, too.

But I just see a huge hole in specifications. Yeah, absolutely. I just have a question for you about like, when you're specifying products, like buildings are made of products, right? And so you can't know everything about everything. Maybe you have a best story or a good example of where a relationship with a product rep or a manufacturer or whatever came in clutch for you on a project.

Alex Gore

So if reps don't know, they probably already know this. A lot of reason architecture firms say yes, so Lunch and Learn SPG get free Qdoba. Right. That

Evan Troxel

there's no, there's no hiding the fact that free food motivates architects to show up to those things. And but but but that might be all they do, they might just like, sneak off as quickly as they can after the freely.

Alex Gore

But honestly, the ones that we had, because we're so into it. And because we have a various, you know, wide range of projects. And they always seem to showcase you know, something new. It's, it has been extremely helpful and informative. And there's always like a question about something that we're dealing with immediately. So like, it's, it's selfish on the food thing, but then it's, it's very helpful for us, because then we can say like, well, I know this about whatever signing system. And I know this, because this is what that rep told me for their products.

So it's like we can already already go with a known known, we know that we know this. Or we can think about a different sizing system that might have different things. And it's like, it might be the same. It might not. I don't know, which 1am I going to specify, you know, which 1am I going to talk about? So honestly, those are those are helpful. And I think some people I don't know, but like my my opinion of them maybe five years ago was it was just a waste of time and a way to get food. But I do not see it as that anymore.

Evan Troxel

Yeah, I think that there's oftentimes where the information is ill timed, because I mean, it might depend on the size of the firm, to be honest, right? Like, you've got a 350 person firm. Getting the right rep in at the right time. For the right, like oh, yeah, good luck, right. Getting the even the people show up on the right day because of schedules could be could be a non starter, right. So I could see it working for you guys. If you're Are you intentional about scheduling those kinds of things to go with the projects that you're working on?

Alex Gore

It's not necessarily that but we're intentional of when the schedule happens. So for example, it's always on a Friday and it's always during lunch, and everyone's always free because it's not a lunch and learn which isn't all the time. Every small firm. We take everyone out to lunch. So it means

Evan Troxel

when they I've been there, I've been there. Yeah, it was delicious on taco shop.

Alex Gore

No, yeah, we need to go there again. Maybe I'll suggest that I have face. So when they come, everyone's there, we even now have a Denver satellite, and Denver comes up on Friday, probably just for the food. But again, it works out gets in there. Yeah. So then everyone is there, you know. And that helps, because I can see that being a huge issue with how are you going to schedule this on a random Thursday? You know, yeah, people are not going to be able to show up, and it might be a critical person. All right.

Evan Troxel

Well, I have an ending question for you. And thank you so much for for taking the time to do this today. So if you were handed a megaphone, Alex, and you could blast one message out for the entire building industry to hear what would you say?

Alex Gore

I think there's an existential threat to the building industry, there's multiple of them. But there's one, there's only one I will address. And I think every a lot of people are in it for a short term game. And that is going to ruin the existential threat. And, for example, Amazon had a clear policy of class, cash flow through volumes through low prices, and a bunch of business people that go to Harvard, MIT does the studies.

And if I'm selling you a comb, Evan and I, and it's $1, but I can act, you'll actually pay $1.50 for it, it makes more sense for me to charge $1.50 for it, and like you're gonna buy it no matter what. But Amazon will say no, no, it will be $1. Because every time you go there, you will then know that you're going to get the best price. And all sudden, Amazon is going to grow. So it's like they sacrifice the short term, 50 cents for the long term, Evan is always a customer.

And this is the message that I want the whole industry to get across is that we need to stop advocating or letting the government just add on more brioche cracy. Because it either helps our products or it doesn't affect us. So Lance and I were just in the meet in a meeting, it was Boulder, Boulder County had a fire, they're going to do fire mitigation things. And some of the rules, literally in the meeting was well, we don't have any proof for this.

But we just wanted to show that we were doing something, I made a point that does not help. That is not helpful for you to do that, to make this buffer zone that there's no reason for that's going to conflict with other buffer zones. You know, blah, blah, there's things I did agree with a lot of fire goes through the eaves the eaves protection. But essentially and then the their experts on their panels will tell them that fire mitigation strategies only only add four to 8k, you know, per house.

And sprinklers accounted for four of those. And I said I don't know where you're getting those prices from, but you cannot get a sprinkler system for any house or townhome, for it's eight to 20k. And I know your numbers are wrong. I've been to plenty of you know, these analysis of costs, I go your double to triple to four times more the expenses that you're adding on. Not only that, but I the 2021 is going to add stuff with the electrification basically houses, I don't want to go all into it. Right.

But what I mean is that the government doesn't have an effective feedback loop where our businesses do meaning, hey, how do I build this out? Or figure it out? Oh, did that make money or did that not make money. And I'm not saying that that's the end all be all. But there is a feedback loop that eliminates things that are counterproductive.

Meaning I can't put a metal studs are when I can't put a window where a piece of metal holding up the building is I just cannot do that. There are so many laws and codes that essentially in a planning way or building way says you must put a window where a metal column is. And if you don't want to do that you have to go through this approval process and then you have to get vote and other people get to stay on. And if you keep if these keep happening, it keeps slowing up the system so that literally no house might be worth it.

You know, like cars, you know, you can get decent car for whatever amount. Like literally the affordability of something that we know how to do something people can do might be gummed up so much. That fit is a national crisis. And we are seeing that and if you don't see the housing prices as a national crisis, I don't think you're looking and I don't think you're thinking about what the benefits of building equity into your house and not just having Blackrock own it and renting it out to you own having pride in your own place so that you keep up the upkeep.

I am very serious in how big of a problem I think this is I don't know if I can convey all the issues with it. But I would like the whole industry to say hey, the short term of me not wasting my time, or me just being okay with it because Has it makes fire sprinklers or it makes my product in, you might gum up the system so much so that your whole industry is now doing 50% less in 10 years than what it was now, because you literally cannot get these through the system.

Evan Troxel

So that applies to both sides. So right, because you're talking about, there might be certain product manufacturers who are going out and lobbying for the inclusion or the these, the bureaucracy, the laws to be put into place to require certain things that they produce, at the expense of 50%. Less work in 10 years, you're also talking to the design professional side and saying, I mean, maybe the billboard of the megaphone messages, get involved in policy, right?

Because so many people are avoiding that not my problem. I'm okay with whatever happens, I'm not in control, what you're saying is, they need to be a part of that they need to be part of the solution. Because architects don't sit on city council or whatever, right? Not all the time, maybe they do sometimes.

But if that's the only avenue that we have to speak up for our industry and our future, and our future, Project potential, and all these things, then we have to seize that. And we have, like, I know, this is not the first time that you've been to these meetings, right? You guys have been to a lot of these meetings, and you're representing not only your firm, but the profession, and the builders and because like it's the industry, right, and you have a stake in the industry, especially in your area. And there are relatively few on the design professional side who actually participate and contribute on that side of things. So

Alex Gore

yep, so for example, in this one situation in the way Boulder County works, if you make any massive development, it's going to get incorporated into the city, whatever city there's like five or six cities, because the county is just not going to handle all the sewer management and all that. So they're going to make all these codes, essentially. And it's going to be a little one off houses. Right. So essentially, if you think about a haystack that's on fire, right, they're going to add all these needles that can't be on fire, that are going to cost a lot more than Hey, that's not going to stop the fire.

So you know, like that might protect that one house, but then all sudden, you can't make houses for the majority of people. So it, we have to be really smart about this. And the other thing, too, is not some manufacturers might be lobbying and unscrupulous ways. But other things might happen where some rapper, someone calls you, or you're at some conference and an avenue represent some technology or something and they just say, Hey, you haven't went, you know, we're thinking about, you know, mandatory mandating these types of products, you know, do you think that will help?

Well, of course I do. Of course, that's gonna be a better solution, it's a better product, it's gonna last longer in the end, it will save them a bunch more money, you know, not taking into account interest costs might add up, you know, more, if you pay more in the beginning. I'm asking people to, to really look at it and understand that this, the way it's structured right now, might be a huge existential risk to the whole industry. And to be honest, and moral about it as you can participate in these boring meetings. And not just let it run through on a post.

Evan Troxel

One thing that that because I'm in California, we also have experienced some pretty substantial wildfire, wildfire damage over the last couple of years in particular. And it's kind of shocking to see it actually happening in other places, because normally California hogs the news on all that stuff, every summer, right? But there is a huge opportunity to build better, but it has to be balanced, right is important.

One thing you don't want to see is things get built back the same way that they have been for the last 50 or 60 years with no technology. This is a great place to innovate and talk to building product manufacturers who have developed innovations, especially when it comes to fire right in incorporate those things. But there is a balance because things can't cost four or five 810 times more than they than they have before because the insurance isn't covering that who is.

Alex Gore

And honestly it can be as simple as this. And you might think there's no way that government would would do this, right? So a lot of people are familiar with setbacks, right? A lot of people come with us and our kids have setbacks. We're going to build this and this and I go well, you forgot to think about the landscape buffers or what our landscape buffers Well, you can't build within the landscape buffer. It's a buffer where you need to put landscape they normally are different than the setbacks.

So So an easy thing It seems stupid is is lobby the city like make the setbacks match the landscape buffers, like your setbacks can then be whatever those make one numbers. Exactly. If you can't build in this area, you can't build in this area, like don't and then and the thing I was saying about the fire risks, like you said is real, right? But now if you're having another thing that doesn't match and let's Say it's bigger, right?

So let's say you have a setback of five feet, landscape by up or seven feet, and a fire thing of 10 feet. Talk to all of all of you, if you're going to make it 10 feet, meaning you cannot build within 10 feet, right, please, instead of literally getting clients pissed off at you going through a process, someone might miss it going through three different reviews, you could literally solve this in the beginning by making the feedback loop making things more efficient. Hey, setback, landscape, and fire are 10 feet,

Evan Troxel

and then share that information. Right like like there's, if you are the architect who orchestrates that kind of a meeting of the minds to come to a decision. One thing our profession and our industry is bad at is then proliferating that to everyone else, so that it raises all boats, right? A lot of I mean, it goes all the way down to the details in our projects, it goes all the way down to the specifications. There's so many times where it's like, yeah, we did we actually enabled people to solve this problem. And then we kept it to ourselves,

Alex Gore

think how painful it is, especially in New adoption. Like, sometimes they will say, like fire will not review it until it's been through permitting, like this is things that happen. So let's say you develop it, and you're spending 10s of 1000s to hundreds of 1000s of dollars, depending on the product. And then it goes to fire and it says, Oh yeah, you're five feet over the line. And guess what it was? Yep. All of it was on looks good. Start over. Yeah. And it's a total solvable problem. But people, people literally that they don't have the feedback loop, and they just want to have, sometimes they just want to do stuff to do stuff.

Evan Troxel

This is this is great conversation to have, because I think it it put that shines a light on the types of things that architects have to deal with all the time. And I think a lot of times, you know, if you're a product rep, and you're trying to sell a particular product to an architect, that architect is thinking about all this stuff, too, right? There's your product. And then there's the 300 other products that I'm going to use on the project too.

And by the way, I've got three projects, they're all in different phases of design, a one's under construction, one's in SDS, one's in DD, I'm fighting with the city about this zoning thing. And it's like you're in a million different places, and why Why aren't you returning that product reps calls? It's like, Well, how could I write? And then and then there's, I mean, this is the kinds of things that architects are dealing with all the time. And it is a kind of a I don't want to say it's too dysfunctional.

It is dysfunctional, right? This whole system is pretty dysfunctional. So that's what we're struggling with. And I help, I think that this kind of conversation shines a light on the types of day to day that architecture actually deals with and why, you know, there is a huge opportunity to be helpful when it's needed. And for the rest of the time, like just back off. And wait. I think that's that's a big piece of it. Absolutely. Well, Alex, thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation today. I can't wait for people to hear this here this episode. I would love it if you could just give everybody some places online where they can follow along with what F nine and F 12 and F 14 And every all the apps are up to.

Alex Gore

Yeah, so on Facebook and Twitter are main places where we put things out. If you search F nine productions, you'll find us and the other one is inside the firm. That's for all of our podcasts, things. So just search those two and subscribe and you'll get updates. The other one too is if you want to check us out on the web. It's F nine productions.com or inside the firm podcast.com Go check those out.

Evan Troxel

I'll put links to all of that in the show notes again, Alex, thank you so much for sharing. This has been a fantastic conversation.

Alex Gore

Thank you Evan, I had a blast.

Evan Troxel

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