Blog Archives

Richard Petrie: Hi, guys and girls. Richard Petrie here, and I'm coming to you from what can only be described as one of the most spectacular backdrops that I could find for you and it's pretty inspirational. I want to welcome you to the program. So welcome on board and I'm excited to get you going. There's so much to do and so much opportunity [00:00:30] you have if you go through this course and implement properly. So the sky's the limit. I guess I wanted to set an ultra exciting backdrop to really set the scene. This is Mont Blanc in the background.

Well, it's all very well him swanning around the French Alps, but we need to get to work. So I'm just going to interrupt every now and again and give you some key points. So the first one is congratulations. Well done for investing in yourself [00:01:00] and investing in your business. It's not easy. You're investing a chunk of money. But the good thing is when you pay, you pay attention. I have had people in the past, friends of mine, who I've put into some of my programs, they haven't paid anything because they've been a friend of mine. And usually, almost always, they do nothing. So when you pay, you pay attention. So kind of you're welcome. I know you paid a chunk of money, but what it'll do is force your focus.

The most successful people from this program do [00:01:30] one key thing. And that's it, and I don't want to oversimplify it. But if you're an...

This is the biggest risk you have as you get on a course. I bought a course the other day, I kind of got halfway through it. And it's a really good course, but I still need to go and finish it. So make a commitment in your head now that you've got to go through this course, you're going through it quickly. The faster you go through it, the better off you are because you get that momentum and you don't want big, long gaps between learning. Just go through it as fast as you can. If you can go through it all, [00:02:00] it's not that much, you can go through it all in a week and take it. And if you can. If you get locked down, or something like that, it would be ideal.

Now, here's something to think about, four and two. I want you to think about spending four hours a week, working on your marketing for at least the first, I don't know, four to six weeks because you'll get through everything, you'll get everything set up. And like I say, the big danger isn't that the system you're going to learn doesn't work, because it does. It's been proven again and again and again, the big danger is you taking [00:02:30] action. So make the commitment now, four hours a week. Maybe it's two lots of two. It's two on a Wednesday after work and two on a Saturday morning. Something like that maybe. That should be enough.

Okay, the next one is 12 and 12. If you can get everything done, which you should be able to do it easily, like set up or four different funnels or your four different marketing systems. If you can get those set up, which you can, like I say, it's easy, within 12 weeks, [00:03:00] then we'll give you 12 months of coaching, right? So normally you get 12 weeks. Well, you get 12 weeks of coaching, right? But if you get it set up fast, we'll give you 12 months of coaching. Okay? So weeks becomes 12 months, otherwise you just get the 12 weeks of coaching. So we're got to this is kind of a carrot on a stick. It's to help you get through it, get through it so [00:03:30] you can get everything done. Okay.

The next thing is Q&As. We run two of these a week, one with me, one with Eric. Okay? Different time zones, that change. We just had daylight savings here, so it'll change the time. There's no point in me giving you the time, but you'll be given the time. Save those links. They're the same every single week. Turn up to those. This is where you can get kind of one-on-one feedback. You can submit something on the Slack channel. And I'll talk about that in a minute too. You can submit something on the Slack channel and we'll look at what it [00:04:00] is. I'll give you feedback, eric will give you feedback on his day and the people, the other members on the course, who are on the call that day as well, they'll give feedback as well. They'll give their opinions. So really important to be on that. There's two of them week. You don't need to go to two, but you could go to one at least per week.

Okay. Next thing. And this one relates to this one really, make this marketing program your number one priority. For a short period of time, you can have everything set up within probably [00:04:30] three or four weeks, four or five weeks, not working too hard. Everything could be set up. The best marketing system you've ever had can be set up, but you do need to make it a priority. Okay. So I know you've got a lot of stuff going on, you're an architect, you're a designer. You guys and ladies are flat out busy constantly. Just find a way to put this at the top for a couple of months.

And then finally, good. Good [00:05:00] is good enough. Now, when it comes to marketing, you want to take your architect or designer hat off because when you're wearing a designer hat, you have to be perfect. That is not the mindset to come in for marketing, right? So when you're coming in with marketing, you're going to take out, I guess our proven boilerplate templates and examples and ways of doing things, but you are going to adapt them for your particular niche and market that you want to work on. So you need to just get stuff done, get it done fast, get it [00:05:30] out there, test it, see how it goes. Maybe you need to tweak your niche a little bit or your message a little bit. Good is good enough. Good is good enough.

Marketing is not the place to be a perfectionist. Design and architecture is a place to be a perfectionist. Marketing isn't because you're constantly testing and measuring. You're testing what you've got, how you've adapted it, see if it works. If it works, you keep running with it or you change it if it doesn't. That's how marketing is. It's kind of more science when you're doing tests all the time and running things.

[00:06:00] Okay. That's about it. Let's go back to old mountain man in the French Alps and see what else has got to say.

That's it really. I'm excited for you. I'm excited to work with you and just remember, attend as many as the weekly one-on-one sessions as you can, set some goals early on, work out what you want to achieve, because everything you learn here, I think can take you to incredible Heights. But you've got to have an outcome that you want to get to. So you've [00:06:30] got an incredible vehicle in this program and really take full advantage of it. Schedule time out in your calendar please. At least take a couple of hours in the first, let's say, the first 30 or 40 days, at least schedule out four hours a week. They don't have to be during work hours. They could be in the weekend or after work, but four hours a week, I'd say, to really knuckle down and get into the training and so that you can implement and attend the weekly Q&A calls. And then after that, maybe a couple of hours [00:07:00] scheduled a week for your marketing.

Well, he's going on a wee bit, so let's get back to the point. We need to do three things. Or in this program, you're going to go through three different phases. You need to go through the getting paid phase first, the getting valued, and then the getting known. Now, the getting paid is... I'm going to actually take you through some, and here we're going to get you valued by explaining to people what you do and how you can help people. So this is not a sales course, this is a course [00:07:30] in helping your ideal clients who need help and solving problems for them. So, one, two, three, four. You're going to create four offers in this phase.

But actually, one of these offers has proven to be so effective and useful, and lucrative actually, for making money for designers, that it's the OCC method. And what we're going to do is we're going to go deep on that. And I'm going to get you stamped with that because that's where you can make money. But it's also where you can win clients. [00:08:00] So in the pre-design phase, before they hire you to do design, I'm going to teach you how to sell people little consulting, packages, little research packages, feasibility studies, because they're easy to sell if you have the right scripts and the right models and the right words and framework, they're easy to sell.

But once you get them in here, they become a client. Once they spend 1500, 2000, 3000 with you, or maybe less, it's up to you, but two to [00:08:30] three is not a bad area charge for these things, it's easy to sell. And once they're on here, the design project is yours to lose. So that's why I've taken this one out here. I'm going to go deep on this and show you how to do it in detail. And seriously, you're going to make money where you used to do stuff for free. You're going to get paid for what you used to do for free.

Then we're going to get into the... This is kind of the, what we used to teach in the S.I.X Program. And we're still to teach this, so you're still going to learn the LCC in here, but you're going to learn other ways to help [00:09:00] people prior to them needing a designer. So that this is where you're going to learn to communicate your value. That communicating your value is the one thing. An inability to communicate your value is why sometimes you get pressured on fees, because people don't understand the differences between you and the lady down the road or the man down the road, because you're not articulating in a way which is quick and easy for them to understand. So we teach you how to value it.

And particularly, there's one thing in here actually, there's a big asterix. [00:09:30] There's a big asterix. There's a special way of speaking, and it's a special script I'm going to give you, which is going to allow you to communicate yourself within about two or three sentences. It's an absolute game changer. And you'll feed that back into all these things, right?

Finally, getting known as about the promotions and where you're going to promote these offers. Now, these offers are all invitations to help people. They're not selling you, so you're not a sales [00:10:00] person anymore. You don't have to think about that. These three offers are all about helping people out who are thinking about going to the design phase. So we're going to promote the fact that you can help people out. So if you're worried about selling, you don't have to worry about selling it for a gain. I don't want you to sell. In fact, selling wouldn't work as well as educating. So whoever educates the market owns the market, and you're going to be an educator of problem, solving information for people looking to do the type of projects that you want to do. [00:10:30] Okay?

So those are the three phases. We're going to get your paid first. We're going to get your valued by creating your offers. And then we're going to get you known by the promotional strategies that you're going to use. So let's go back up the mountain and let him finish whatever it is he's got to say.

Yeah, excited to have you on board, excited to see what type of, where you want to take your business and your life. And aim high would be my advice, aim high. It's still, you've got an incredible resource [00:11:00] and tools, so let's do it. Why not? You only get one life. All right. We'll see. Speak to you personally soon. Bye.

Richard Petrie:

Welcome to the SIX+MAPS portion of the program. I'll just do another quick introduction in case you've forgotten who I am, but I'm Richard Petrie. I'll coach you through this section. I'm not an architect, that's a benefit because I get to see things from a different person's perspective. I'm not bound up by the limitations or the industry restrictions of thinking that some of you might have, particularly around fees and what you can do. Written a few books, and with Eric Bobrow, we have officially banned over 90,000 architects from doing any free work. Not all of them listen, which is good for you, but those who get on the SIX+MAPS program do listen.

Richard Petrie:

So, Hey, you got to answer one question, and this is part of what the SIX+MAPS program is going to help you do. Why should I hire you? Now each blank square represents an architect to someone who really doesn't understand design as well as you do. They all look the same. And so what we need to do is work out how are we going to communicate you and make you special. How are we going to make you into a star? And the SIX+MAPS program is going to help you do that.

Richard Petrie:

And not just to startle anyone, but you want to be a star to the projects or the clients, the top 20%. However you define them, because usually the top 20% spend 80% of the money. Or even if it's not money, maybe it's 20% of the projects that give you 80% of your fulfillment. So however you decide to find the best projects or the best clients. Those are the ones I want to help you win in the SIX+MAPS program. That's what we're going to do.

Richard Petrie:

All right. So you've probably been through the LCC method and isn't that cool. You're going to no longer work for free. You're going to get paid, follow the method that works for everybody that tries it. Interact with members on the Slack community and chat with them, find out what works for them or what doesn't work for them. And if you're getting stuck on any particular aspect of anything through this course, ask questions. You've got a whole world of architects who are doing this course with you. Some have been doing it a lot longer than you. And if you've got any questions, ask them on the Slack channel, or you can ask me or Eric on the weekly coaching sessions.

Richard Petrie:

But anyway, moving through, we're moving into the get valued, get known. So the steps one to nine in the SIX+MAPS program. And what sort all about? It's really about identifying who your ideal client is and knowing that they have a number of options they can go to. But what we're going to do is we're going to build some offers that attract your ideal clients. And the offers sit over here and the client gets attracted into these offers. And by taking up any of these little offers on the left-hand side, they end up with you. All right, it's clever. It's simple. And when you go through this program, it's kind of obvious, but no one's doing it, but you will soon. People ask, "Where do I promote my offers?" There's a whole lot of different places you can promote your offer. And you'll learn all about each of these in the final phase.

Richard Petrie:

Now we know that winning design projects is tough. The good news is you're not competing against Apple, the competition you're up against other architects are reasonably ordinary. You're going to be a good step above everyone else's. A bit like the joke in there's two men walking through the forest and they come across a bear, and they're both running away. And one of them says "I don't know if I can outrun this bear. What are you going to do?" He said, "I'm just going to run faster than you." Because you only have to run faster than the other guy.

Richard Petrie:

And with marketing, you only have to be a bit better than the other guys or gals out there. And you're going to do very, very well. You can out-market everybody, I promise you. When you've been through this program, doesn't matter whether you're commercial, residential, industrial, this process will work. You could be institutional. You could be doing sustainable work. The SIX+MAPS will work for you.

Richard Petrie:

Nine reasons you might not have been booked solid at premium fees up until now. Up until now. Could be any of these. You haven't got a goal. You haven't targeted high value clients. Your high value clients don't see you as special. Maybe you don't give your high value clients reason for them to reach out to you. Maybe you don't give them reasons for wanting to talk to you. Maybe you don't give them reasons for wanting to hire you. Maybe you don't have any marketing systems that is attractive to them. Maybe you only rely on referrals or maybe you have no followup. There's a whole lot of reasons why you may have a reasonable business, but not a great business. And it's because you're not doing a lot of these things. And we're going to fix all that, because each of these steps really fixes one of those problems.

Richard Petrie:

So you're going to go through ... This marketing system is all about choosing a niche and building a marketing system specifically for this niche. And you're going to go through little exercises that look like this, and you're going to assess different markets and different niches and you're going to choose one. You're going to create a million dollar message as to why people should hire you and what unique value you provide to that particular type of client. And you're going to get rapport with them because it's going to be very relevant. So you're going to work through the worksheets, there's a whole lot of worksheets like this that you just work through. And then when you get certain messages, you're going to infuse them into the future steps. Once we know how you want to be positioned and the value you're going to provide, you're going to infuse that into everything else.

Richard Petrie:

So let's answer a few questions. "Where's the best place to promote myself?" Well, you're getting a little ahead of yourself, aren't you? We're going to be covering Facebook and we are going to do advertising, we ... No, hang on. Okay, I'll answer it. I think referrals is the best place to promote yourself to get started with. Leave the fancy stuff like Facebook or expensive stuff like paid advertising, leave that until later I want you to master referrals. You're going to learn a thing called the Dirty 30 and the Dream Team. They'll be much better for you than anything else to get started. Design is a referral business, and you're only as good as your network. So what we need to do is build your network first, and that'll be the best thing to do. It's the best place to advertise yourself.

Richard Petrie:

"I've tried lots of marketing, nothing seems to work. Why? Does anything work?" Yeah. Well, one step selling doesn't work when you're selling high value design services. You can't do this thing called one step selling, we need two and three step selling. Well, what is that? I'm glad you asked. You need to know the Three Musketeers. And these are the three offers that you are going to create in the SIX+MAPS program to invite people to connect with you. So you may have already heard me talk about the different phases that buyers go through. There's only a very small number really to hire an architect right now. There's more who needs specific advice and there's large number in the information gathering phase, sort of at the bottom of the pyramid is where most people are.

Richard Petrie:

So, we need an offer, a reason for them to hire your firm if they're in the top 3%. But down here is where we really make our mark, so we're going to create a diagnosis offer and a couple of educational offers. And we're going to pick up those people at the bottom of the pyramid, and they're not all tire-kickers, by the way. It's just that they're not ready to hire someone right now, but we will pick them up, we will help them out. And then we will graduate them into hiring you as their architect in good time, with things like the Monkeys Fist and the LCC.

Richard Petrie:

By the way, if I'm talking fast and there's a lot to take in, don't worry. I'm going to step you through everything slowly, but I kind of want to give you a tiki tour of the whole program. Well, not the whole program, but a big picture perspective of what you're going to be getting into. This is the key. This is where we're going to get people in the door. That's selling, this is educating and this is advising or consulting. Most architects only have a selling offer. You are also going to have an advising offer, which is your LCC. And you are going to have some educational offers, things like the Project Planning Pack.

Richard Petrie:

"Why are architects fees always been questioned?" Because you don't know how to communicate your value. You don't know how to position yourself as special yet, but you will very soon. What does SIZ mean? Well, it means Sunshine Island Express. What is Sunshine Island? Well, that's Sunshine Island, the top white right quadrant. An architect in Sunshine Island is earning high fees and they're working on projects they love. Who doesn't want to be there? So we want to transition you from wherever you are now to higher fees and high fulfillment, or the type of projects that you love doing.

Richard Petrie:

So all aboard, let's go. All right, "What sort of results have people got?" This is Richard Dudzicki. I'm not going to read through them all. In fact, most of these are on our Facebook page. If you go to our private Facebook page and go #sixmaps, you will see these people have put their videos up of what they've done. I mean, they're all getting different results, but they're all getting good results, doing different things. Some of them focus on one area and not another. They're all generally making more money and winning better quality projects.

Richard Petrie:

We've got people from UK, Canada, South America, Europe, a lot from the US, New Zealand, Australia, all over the world. And it doesn't really matter where you are. All that matters is that you're prepared to go through the system, follow the system and be prepared that not everything will work out perfectly for you, but you will learn along the way, just like all these people did. It's all good. So more leads, fees are up 50%, doing predesign work for free. She used to, and now 23% of her income come from LCC. It's 23% of her income, that's pretty good when she used to do all that for free. So very nice. You have much better Christmases when you're earning more money.

Richard Petrie:

Mona Quinn, we have an unlimited number of testimonials, which is great. I'm proud of them all. I love them all. They're all doing great things. And I'm even proud to show you. This is Peter Twohy, he'sin our Mastermind group. He's gone from Porsches ... No, porches to Porsches. All right, cool. Adrian Ramsey. You might meet some of these guys in the Slack channel or on the weekly Q and A calls, they tend to be regular. The more you come, that's the thing I find. The more you come to the weekly Q and A course, the faster you pick a lot of these concepts up. So people like Adrian a lot of those people you've seen, they're there every week. They're there every week.

Richard Petrie:

"So what support do I get?" We have a Slack community. Slack's an online application where we chat, like Facebook Instant Messaging, but it's different. We do two weekly coaching calls. We do live events when the world is not in chaos, and we have a good time.? And if you ask questions in Slack, this is Slack here. If you ask questions like Eleanor's doing here, Eric might answer, she might come back, I might answer. And we will help you out. But most of the questions, it's best if you cover it ... You might post your question and we'll answer it in the weekly Q and A call.

Richard Petrie:

"So how does SIX help me get higher fees and better projects when other marketing has failed me?" Well, just taking you through a series of small projects, a few steps. Most people don't have any goals. Then what we do is we help you work yourself through the Power Pyramid. We want high value clients to see you as someone special. So that's step number two, step number three ... We're not step number three, but steps number four, five, and six is where we're going to create your offers and we're going to automate them.

Richard Petrie:

So when I say automate, we're going to give you landing pages that look like this, and we're going to do it for you. You fill out a form, tell us what to do. We'll set up calendars so people can book automatic appointments with you, and we'll do that for you. This is an example of a Monkey's Fist for Project Planning Pack. We'll give you the Project Planning Pack and once you might want to tailor it a little bit, and then give it back to us and tell us, "I want this." And then we'll set that up for you.

Richard Petrie:

Video explanations of the LCC, which you can give to clients, you can send out to clients, that says, "Here's the steps that we go through. And here's why the LCC is so important." And we do that for you too. We explain to your clients and they can go to a landing page. They can request to see it. System integration, we integrate the systems. There's email campaigns. Once they request to Monkey's Fist, we have followup emails that automatically get set up to go to them. That's all done for you as well. And there's a CRM system that you can use, which tracks everything.

Richard Petrie:

"How do my ideal clients find me?" Well, you do promotions. So you'll do referral promotions, you might do non-referral promotions. And then the circle of love is about following up with people. The really cool part, it's just set up. You fill out a form, press a button, and you have a complete funnel setup for you in days, because all you have to do is provide us with the changes you want and we'll put it all together for you. That's the funnels, we'll put all the funnels together for you. It's the tech stuff. You don't have to worry. It's kind of like a concierge service.

Richard Petrie:

Now you may say, "Well, I don't have time to write newsletters. I heard you'll want me to do newsletters." Don't worry, we've got 12 months of newsletters three quarters done. You just put in your feature article or feature 200 word article, maybe you change some of the pictures. You change it and customize it as much or as little as you want. But it's not completely done for you, it's three quarter done for you. I don't have time to write Monkey's Fist. No problem, we have some available for you. They're called Project Planning Packs. A lot of architects like to adapt them because you like to customize them, that's fine. But the heavy lifting has been done for you, you just customize it and put your name and contact details.

Richard Petrie:

"How would I customize my Monkey's Fist?" Go into the vault and you'll see examples of what other people have done. You don't even need to read this page because none of this you have to worry about, it's set up for you. So relax, relax. It does seem like a lot. It is, you're going to get a lot, but it's going to be set up in a number of days or weeks, not years or decades. You still think I don't have time to make it compelling LCC video? Don't worry, we've done it for you. Don't worry.

Richard Petrie:

What if I get stuck? Don't worry. You can come to the Slack community, the marketing vault. If you're not sure about something, ask us. We do coaching sessions two times a week, you're probably well aware of that by now. We don't have a lot of hair but we are here a lot, twice a week in fact. We'll coach you through it. We'll make you the Tiger Woods of architect marketing, or landscape marketing, or interior design marketing. I don't know what you do. But it'll be something like that. I'm pretty sure. We'll give you advice. We'll work you through things. We'll give you our feedback, and you can just sit on a beach with your thumb and your middle finger together, and you can go on and you can contemplate life. You're going to make so much progress.

Richard Petrie:

You will work hard. I'm not going to say it's going to be completely easy. You will have to put the work in, but you are going to achieve so much in a short period of time. And once it's set up, it's there for life. You don't have to be Einstein. You just have to follow the nine projects. All we're trying to do is create four different automated offers, that's all. The whole process is about creating four automated offers and then promoting those offers. That's all, there's nothing more to it. Is it confusing? No, you just go through a series of maps, you fill out the maps and then you'll understand what you need to do. And then you give us whatever we need to be given and we'll set it up for you.

Richard Petrie:

So it is exciting. It can be overwhelming to start. If you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed, great, you're in the right space. It will be a little overwhelming because it's a lot to take on when you're used to doing not very much on your marketing, but you're going to be doing stuff and it's going to be smart stuff. And the more often you attend the weekly Q and A's, the faster everything will integrate into your head. You will get confused early on, but it will all integrate into your head, I promise you. If you turn up to the weekly coaching calls, listen to what people are talking about, you'll be the smartest marketer in almost any room you go into, anywhere, even outside marketing.

Richard Petrie:

All right, it's all very systematic. You get all the templates and I want to see you as our next success story. So that's it. That's an overview. Sorry, it took a little longer than I wanted to, but there was a fair bit to the SIX+MAPS system. And hopefully this has given you a big picture perspective, and you're now excited and ready to dive into the training.