What Do You Do to Attract the Work and Clients You Love?

Date: Mar 7, 2016 9:51:19 AM

I can barely explain the level of excitement I felt when we set up an office-wide meeting to discuss our individual thoughts on Pirie’s 2016 marketing focus.  Okay, this probably does NOT sound particularly exciting (and yes, I tend to geek-out about marketing), but this was not your typical marketing meeting.

The overarching goal: to “use our imaginations to ‘dream’ our perfect projects and clients into being” (excerpt from Laura’s email request for the meeting).  What could be more fun than that?!  Come together to learn what gets each of us giddy happy about what we do and discuss how we can build our company to support and encourage doing those things?  Organic business growth nurtured by genuine love for what you do?  A business shaped by its PEOPLE?  Now that’s something to get excited about!  

[ This is EXACTLY what we do with our clients!   We help them envision their aspirations (and those of their clients/customers) and bring that “dream” to life in their environments. ]

Bring that “dream” to life in their environments

See it in action here.

One of the best parts of our session was seeing the ways we are similar and the ways we are different.  We were asked to develop a list of client and project types that we are personally THRILLED to work on.  Paul gets super excited about adaptive reuse and historical buildings, and Laura particularly enjoys working with our institutional clients.  Although I was afraid to be seen as jumping on the tiny house bandwagon, I realized I shared a love of micro-living and micro-spaces with just about everyone! We also learned that some of us are most passionate about the beginning stages of a project - getting into our clients minds and conceptualizing, while others most enjoy the “making” part of what we do – where ideas blossom into fruition.  Such a great balance!  

Many of us, myself included, struggled to narrow our focus by type or scale because we get excited by all different types of projects and clients and enjoy the variety and unique experience that each one brings…this goes to show that what we do WORKS AT ALL LEVELS.  What creates continuity and grounds us all is the desire to build TRUST with our clients so we can do what we do best - act as an extension of them to help move their lives/businesses/institutions forward through their built environment.

A personal note: This was not a first-time event at Pirie Associates, but having just joined the team in October, it was a first for me.  These visioning meetings were something Laura told me about during my initial interview, and they were probably the number one reason why I was so excited to join the team.  I had considered and dismissed the idea of starting my own practice, but maintained the desire (gut-driven need, really) to be an integral contributor to how the business I was a part of operates and grows.  I am turned off by giant egos and vertical layers of management that don’t allow for every member of a team to have a voice.  That does not exist here.  Interested in being a part of it?