Blog Archives

Okay, you've done it. Welcome to the training program. You must have received an email from us with a link, your username, and password to access this platform. I hope that's the case. If so, you need to save these credentials because you'll want to return to the training area as you progress through the 6 program and the other two programs we are providing to you.

Save this information now. Don't lose the email. If you ever do lose it, you can always message us on Slack once you get onto the platform.

You should be right here at the moment. You should have clicked on this button and see a dashboard that looks a bit like this.

I'm going to take you through what these six different tiles are so you have an overview of what you're going to do. These tiles are for training, and I'll go through each of them in a minute. These tiles down here are tools that will help you with the training. They're going to support you when you're building your marketing system—your 6 marketing system. Remember, your marketing system is custom-made or geared directly toward targeting a specific type of project or client. If you have different types of projects you want to pursue, you'll want multiple marketing systems, and that's fine.

To give you an overview of the timeline for this program: the first 7 days are for the Magic Arrows program. I'll tell you more about that in a minute. It shouldn't take too long to complete—you could do it all in one afternoon or even in a couple of hours. That's the first 7 days; I'm giving you plenty of time.

In the next week or 10 days, you'll go through the LCC method, and then you'll move into the main program, which is the 6 program. It's this one here. I'll tell you why I want you to do the other two programs first and the catch with the LCC method in a minute.

This is what your year is going to look like. You'll do one course in the first week, another course in the second week to get up to speed quickly, and then you'll get into the 6 program after 2 or 3 weeks. You'll be doing it for the rest of the year.

Why do you need to be on the 6 program? By the way, the sun and those nine-step things—that's all one program. You'll be doing it from day 19 to day 365 because you'll be refining things as you put together your system. It won't take you long to set up—you should have everything set up within 60 days—but you'll want to refine things. You might want to add new funnels if you want to go after different types of projects. We give you plenty of time and lots of support.

We want you to have time to make a few mistakes, ask questions, and maybe go on holiday. That's cool. You've got plenty of time, right? So that's kind of how your next year is going to look. You're going to be a marketer as well as a designer. Heaven forbid, you're going to be a marketer, right?

Who would have ever thought? And that's because if you're a business owner, you need to be a marketer first and an architect or designer second. If you don't do the marketing and win the projects, there is no design or architecture firm. It's kind of exciting. Everyone thinks—particularly if you're a small firm, and I guess most people in this program are smaller firms—that being a marketer is a little unbecoming. But I can tell you, anyone running a large firm is a marketer. They understand.

I've had people come in from some of the big design firms in New York, and they say, "Everybody thinks we're not doing any marketing." They have full-time tender-writing proposal staff on their team. They said, "We may look like we're calm, like a duck floating on the water, but underneath, our legs are kicking constantly because if we've got a lot of people, we need a lot of projects." The leaders, directors, and owners of these large design firms are actively involved in marketing. It's just one of the many mindset things you need to get your head around if you're going to be running a business. No matter what business it is—design or anything else—you need to be a marketer. When I say marketer, maybe you think "marketing sales." No, it's about winning projects. You need to be an expert in winning projects, and that's what you're going to learn to do. Kind of exciting.

Let's go through the different tiles and what they are.

First, the Magic Arrows—quick wins for quick results. What is it? You'll do it in the first 7 days. These are strategies that are quick to deploy and will get you quick results. Not always, depending on where you are and what you're doing, but these are the quickest things I've found to get results. Why do I want you to get results? I want you to ideally get a payback on this program as quickly as possible. If we can get you a payback within the first 7 days, how good would that be for you and for us? Everybody wins.

There are about 7 or 8 quick wins in there, but we may add more. The videos are about 3 to 5 minutes long, maybe 7 or 8, and the strategies don't take long to do. I want you to do that first because I want you to get some quick wins. I find that people who have quick wins and make a bit of quick money or raise their fees or win a quick project seem like happy people.

What is the LCC method? This is a little strange. Isn't the LCC method part of 6? Yes, it is. But I'm going to get you to go through the LCC method because it's so important. This is the sales process you're going to use when you're building your 6 marketing system. You're probably getting incoming calls and referrals now. I want you to immediately start deploying this effective sales process, which is the LCC method. We don't need to wait until you've got your full 6 system set up; we can start converting people into projects now that are already coming through. Learn how to sell properly using the LCC method.

It’s a process for selling people into a pre-design research exercise. It's like a mini project before the design project. It's pre-design research that needs to be done. I won't go too deep into it—you'll learn all about it when you go through the program. What it does is get you paid for work you used to do for free and helps you convert prospects into paying clients. Not necessarily into design clients yet, but into paying clients who pay you to do some research.

The other thing it does is scare off people who don't like spending money. Instead of spending 10 hours doing free work for people, you can spend 1 hour with them. If they don't want to go through your LCC method process—you might call it a feasibility study or needs and options review, but internally we call it the LCC method—then you can opt out. You don't have to do that 10 hours of research, investigation, and site visits. You've qualified that they're not suitable. Really useful.

So that's the LCC method. It's step number 6 in the 6 program.

Here is the 6 program. These are the steps you will go through when you get to it. There are 9 steps, as you'll see. There's all sorts of interesting things in there. There's Love, which is short for Circle of Love, the LCC, and other things. You'll go through that in days 19 to 60, roughly. You may get to it sooner or later. It will help you win better projects, set higher fees, and create 4 funnels for each niche you want to win projects from. It's almost like a fishing rod system where you're designing a fishing rod for each type of fish you want to catch.

Down here, you will see Member Vault, Weekly Q&A Recordings, and Sunshine Island App. I'll go through these.

What is the Member Vault? You'll click on that button and see the Member Vault come up with navigation below it. These are all resources that previous clients and members have put together as they went through the program. We've seen great stuff done by previous members, so I tend to see them. They send them to me or bring them to the Q&A, and I say, "Oh, that's good." I'll grab that and put it in the Member Vault. That way, when people like you are coming through, you don't have to start with a blank piece of paper. If you're going through step number 4 and creating your own "Monkey's First," you'll be able to look at what other people did for inspiration. Don't copy this stuff directly, but you can use it for inspiration. If you come up with something really good, I'll probably grab yours and stick it in the vault as well.

The next one is the Weekly Q&A Recordings. Every week, there are 2 Q&A sessions: one with me and one with Eric. If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, they're on Wednesday and Friday. In the Northern Hemisphere, they're on Tuesday and Thursday. These are where you come along and ask any questions you want, and other members will be in the room as well. These are just the recorded versions of those sessions.

If you can't make any of them, no problem. You can come and watch. There are 2 per week of these training sessions, unless it's Christmas or I'm on holiday. But I'm there pretty much every time, and so is Eric. You can watch them any time. They're recorded, and you can go back years if you want. I would recommend attending one Q&A session per week, ideally live. If you ask questions, you get more engaged.

Finally, we have the Sunshine Island app. This is the interface with your marketing

system. You're going to create this fishing rod to catch the type of fish you want. It is your CRM—a client relationship management tool, your database of all the prospects and leads you have coming in. There are videos explaining how to use it. This is your interface for that and where you access and control your marketing tools within the 6 system. I won't go into detail on it—you can go through the training. I just want to give you an orientation of the dashboard and the different training and tools you have. Hopefully, now you understand what this dashboard is and how to work it.

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.