Frank Stasiowski’s Reflections on 50 Years of PSMJ Leadership in Helping Firms Thrive

I was asked recently what I’m most proud of when I look back on the 50 years that PSMJ has been the go-to consulting, training, and data resource firm for the AEC industry. The answer is that I’ve accomplished what I intended to do - and what I have been encouraging firm leaders to do since I started PSMJ in the 1970s - I made myself irrelevant.

With the team we’ve built - from Dave Burstein and Sue LeComte, who have been with me almost from the beginning; to all our brilliant consultants and talented professionals over the years; to our growth-focused President and day-to-day leader Greg Hart, right up to the new employees we hired last month - even when I’m not available, the beat goes on.

Takeaway #1
Forget Ego & Build Your Firm’s Brand

Your business isn’t about your name; it’s about your brand. Many firms start off bearing the name of the founder, and reflect the founder’s identity, and this can work for a while. But for a firm to grow and thrive for any length of time, it needs a public-facing image that’s bigger and bolder than the personality of a single leader or two. Why? Because bad things happen when an individual, not the brand, owns the clients. Individuals come and go. They retire or take extended leave. And that puts client relationships in jeopardy.

The transition from individual to brand ownership can be difficult, but many successful firms have done it – look at SOM and HOK.

In the early 1980s, I was working with a 180-person firm in Texas, and I recommended to the president that he change the firm’s name and start creating a brand. By then, the firm was over 40 years old, and the founder had retired, but the firm still used its – and his – original name. It wasn’t easy, but they made the change. They’re now one of the five largest architecture firms in the industry, HKS. In the same way, PSMJ isn’t about me. It’s why I never put my name in the title. The idea is to build a team that represents a brand that will be here forever to take care of the industry.

Takeaway #2
“Be Positively Irreverent.”

When I started PSMJ, one of the big things that AEC executives talked about was bidding for design services. Professional services organizations once had rules outlawing professional bidding, so firms got the same fee for doing the same work in all cases. Then the Federal Trade Commission determined that universal fee schedules were “price fixing,” and the Supreme Court agreed. If not for this, PSMJ may never have existed. I was a young guy on the AIA’s Practice Committee, and we spent about a year trying to figure out the best way to price services. I argued for value pricing. I lost. The associations determined that the way accountants and lawyers charged for their work – by the hour – was good enough for us. I decided to host a conference on how to bid design services. We held it in Washington, DC, under the noses of the associations. I almost lost my license. But with not a lot of lead time or the huge network we have now, 580 executives showed up. That’s how important the topic was. We didn’t give them a magic pill; we talked about how to manage the ethics and realities of bidding for work. This is one example of being professionally irreverent in a positive way. Stirring things up, not just for the sake of it, but for the greater good of the industry. If you know PSMJ, you know that we boldly push boundaries and take calculated risks to inspire our industry to think, stretch and expand viewpoints. You can do the same in your firm.

Takeaway #3
Price on Value

This has been a constant through the years. We’ve authored books and hundreds of articles about this subject. We are passionate and bullish champions of value pricing. We’ve been talking about it for half a century, and we’ve made significant progress in our industry in turning around the hourly pricing practice. At one 25-person firm I know in Colorado, they make about $9 million a year in profit, and they don’t even keep track of how many hours anyone works. They’re paid what they’re worth, and their clients love them. What’s wrong with that?

Takeaway #4
Train For Good Project Management

In 1974, when an engineer friend and I started writing newsletter articles about how to run a design firm, we also created a training program on project management under the new pricing system. Our first event, and the first project management training course I’d ever heard of, was at a Howard Johnson’s in Chicago. This was the humble genesis of the AEC Project Management Bootcamp, the industry’s most prolific and enduring PM training program. We train over 5,000 project managers a year, and we prove its effectiveness with definitive data. Much of the terminology and metrics used in today’s AEC project management came out of this training program. “Earned revenue” is one example. We are champions of comprehensive, practical project management training. Our AEC PM Bootcamp is definitely one of PSMJ’s most significant contributions to the industry. Ask almost anyone.

Takeaway #5
Predict The Future

We have constantly predicted the future, and it has served us well. We don’t get everything 100% right – no futurist does. But there is enormous value in the exercise of trying to figure out what’s coming next. Every 10 years I write a book forecasting where the AEC industry will be in a decade; the most recent is “Impact 2030,” which was published in 2019. Strategic planning for AEC firms should include a freewheeling, unrestrained session of crystal ball reading to predict future trends. You’ll be surprised at how much this can inform your strategy, and how often people get it right.

Takeaway #6
Emphasize Data

One of the big differentiators for PSMJ is the depth of our data. We have actual financial statistics on compensation, financial performance and other aspects of design firm operations dating back to 1979. As artificial intelligence and other digital technologies increasingly rely on clean, robust data, it is imperative for AEC firms to focus on collecting, organizing, optimizing and protecting their proprietary data.

Takeaway #7
Get Ahead Of Ownership Transition

We currently represent 18 firms looking to transition to new ownership and we’ve written over 150 buy-sell agreements. We love helping founders get the value they deserve from their life’s work. An indisputable fact is that firms that prepare early and well usually have the best outcome. The longer you wait and the less sound your strategy is, the harder and more stressful the process.

Bonus Takeaway
Love Your Clients

This is the one persistent piece of advice I have; love your clients. You have competitors who would like nothing more than to take them away, but don’t let it happen. Treat clients fairly. Do your best for them. Follow through. If you say you’ll do something, move Heaven and Earth to make sure you do it. And avoid the common trap of taking long-term clients for granted while trying to win new ones. They notice and it’s the fastest way to lose them. I hope this look into the past helps your firm today and tomorrow. It has been a great 50 years and we’re just getting started.

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