Epic Entrepreneurs
Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs! What does it take to build a real and thriving business in today’s world? As entrepreneurs and business owners, we went into business to have more freedom of time and money. Yet, the path of growing a business isn’t always filled with sunshine and rainbows. In this chart-topping show, host Bill Gilliland; author of the best-selling book “The Coach Approach” leverages his decades of experience coaching proven entrepreneurs to make more money, grow the right teams, and find the freedom of EPIC Entrepreneurship.
Epic Entrepreneurs
Designing Success: Boutique Architecture with Partner Nate Webster
What does it mean to run a "boutique" architecture firm in today's market? Nate Webster, partner at ARCA Design in Asheville, North Carolina, reveals the strategic advantages of staying small and nimble while delivering projects ranging from custom homes to $20 million museums.
Growing up as the son of a residential contractor, Webster developed an early appreciation for construction before discovering his passion for design in high school. While he initially planned to work in larger markets after graduating from UNC Charlotte, the opportunity to join ARCA Design brought him back to Western North Carolina immediately—a decision he hasn't regretted.
Since becoming a partner in 2021, Webster has navigated the transition from employee to business owner while maintaining the firm's distinctive approach. Unlike many architecture practices where partners primarily focus on bringing in business, ARCA partners remain deeply involved in the design process. This hands-on approach stems from the founding partners' desire to avoid the pitfalls they experienced at larger regional firms where client relationship management often displaced creative work.
Perhaps most striking is ARCA's commitment to work-life balance. Webster shares how the firm supported his wife (also an ARCA architect) with flexible work arrangements after their first child was born—in 2018, well before remote work became commonplace. This family-first philosophy permeates their culture without compromising their professional standards or growth.
When asked about their business strategy, Webster acknowledges areas for improvement like marketing but emphasizes that their growth comes primarily from quality service and meaningful relationships. Their philosophy is refreshingly straightforward: focus on your craft first, and success will follow.
For architects, designers, and entrepreneurs alike, Webster's journey offers valuable insights into building a business that balances professional excellence with personal priorities. Tune in to discover how this boutique firm maintains its creative edge while creating space for what matters most.
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Hey there, Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I'm super pumped today, but before I get to our guest, I just want to remind you we've got coming up on September 23rd, the Asheville Business Summit. The website is wncsummitcom. Make sure to get your tickets out there on there. Look, I'm pumped today. We've got Nate Webster. He's a partner in ARCA Design. I'm going to let him tell you what that is. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Bill Gilliland. I own Action Coach Business Growth Partners and one of the founders of the Asheville Business Summit. So, Nate, hey, tell us about you and ARCA.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me on today. It's the first podcast appearance for me, so it should be fun. But yeah, my name is Nate Webster. I'm a partner at Arca Design. We're here in Asheville, north Carolina, and we're a small boutique architecture firm. We definitely primarily provide commercial design services, but we kind of dip our toe into the residential design market as well. And, yeah, we kind of intentionally try to keep ourselves in that boutique kind of category to allow us to be a little bit more nimble and work on a variety of project types.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I grew up in this area, uh, from waynesville, um, and my dad's a residential contractor. So I kind of grew up with that interest of construction and the technical aspects of of what that is and then, in, uh, in high school, started to develop an interest in design and creative kind of explorations. And then I had a teacher uh, coach ronhart was my drafting teacher. He encouraged me to look into architecture as it kind of explorations. And then I had a teacher uh, coach Ron Hart was my drafting teacher and he encouraged me to look into architecture as it kind of combines those two things. And then went to school at UNC Charlotte and studied there and had planned to kind of move around to different cities and and uh, get the experience of working in larger markets and some larger firms. Uh, but had a great job offer with ARCA coming out of school and, um, yeah, it's kind of the. The rest is history, I guess, as they say. But uh, yeah, it's been a great, a great setup for me here.
Speaker 1:But it's pretty hard to say no to western north carolina right for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I knew that. Uh, growing up here and growing up in waynesville, I knew that I wanted to settle here and raise my family here, but didn't expect for it to be immediately after school. But it's wouldn't have it any other way yeah, I was.
Speaker 1:I was actually born in ashville, didn't actually grow up there, I grew up down in south carolina, but I knew we, we knew we'd be back and uh, it took us a little longer than we thought. Actually we got here a little quicker than we thought because we thought it might just be a retirement thing. But yeah, so we've been back a while. But yeah, let me ask you, I got a question about the boutique thing. What does that mean? Like what exactly? You know? How would you define that?
Speaker 2:I would say that that's something that our founding partners, brian Moffitt and Alan McGuinn, intentionally set up when they started our firm. So they both come from a background that's more kind of a larger regional corporate firm model, where they were in an Asheville office of a firm that had offices in Winston-Salem and Charlotte up in Virginia and in South Carolina Salem and Charlotte, up in Virginia and in South Carolina and there were definitely some pros to that model but there were some cons and I think a lot of architecture firms and there are definitely benefits to it but end up having a focus or a niche that they work within, and I think that that was something that they didn't want to necessarily do. So when we say that we're a boutique firm, I think that that just echoes the level of care and kind of attention that each design gets. They're all kind of custom-tailored solutions to the client's needs and to their whatever site requirements they may have, whether it's an existing building or a vacant lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love that. Well, let me ask you some business stuff. If you had to start from square one in business, what would you do differently?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. You and I had kind of talked a little bit earlier and touched on the fact that my role at Arcade Design as one of the partners is a little bit fresher. I became a partner here in 2021. So I feel like in some ways, I'm still very much and I'm sure I would say the same thing 30 years from now but learning about being a business owner every day. But I think that we are every day, but I think that we are in some in.
Speaker 2:In some ways, we try to to to keep our everything kind of streamlined, maybe to a fault, to where we we maintain responsibilities of things that would would maybe be better performed by by other people.
Speaker 2:So having having other people on staff that could maybe do some of those tasks like, for instance, um, the, the role that marketing plays in our firm, we kind of have kind of ebb and flow with what role that plays in how we, how we do that.
Speaker 2:I mean, like in our office I end up managing all the social media, um outreach and stuff like that, which, when that's on the forefront of my mind, I think it's I do a decent job at it, but it's certainly not my priority, and so to kind of to think about marketing in a in a different way, I think would be pretty useful. But then at the same time, in our business it's so much about client relationship and so much of our work comes from repeat clients or client references from contractors. There's a big part of our industry is kind of helping each other out with referencing contractors to tell owners that need that and vice versa. Contractors will will give our reference to people often. So we, we think of what we do every day as a form of marketing. That the our, our client relationships that we maintain and the work that we put out is is marketing in a sense, um, but I think that you can do that to a fault as well, to where you you kind of put the traditional marketing on the back burner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you likely didn't go to school to be an architect, to do marketing, but, on the other hand, you know, in a professional services firms, a lot of times the partners are the rainmakers, you know. So they're the ones that have to bring in the business for the firm. So it's an interesting question. It's great learning. So what else have you learned, like what are some of the other learnings that you've had as an owner and an employer since 2021, when you became a partner?
Speaker 2:That's a good question.
Speaker 2:It's probably one that I should reflect on on a regular basis to be better equipped in my day-to-day work. But I think we've had some experiences where I don't think I mentioned being a smaller firm. We have five architects on staff and three of us are our active partners partners, um and uh, but there's really within the way that we've structured our company at this point um, there's not a ton of uh delegation that that happens. Uh, we do have people that come in like we just had our summer intern go back to school. Um, and that's definitely a blind spot for me in terms of when we have staff in the office, whether they're temporary or longer term, being in the mindset and well equipped to be able to pass on tasks to other people that we've got that are certainly in the position to be able to perform those. And I think that in the near future we'll be expanding our workforce a little bit.
Speaker 2:So, that's something that I think your question was more what have I learned? But that might be forecasting a little bit. Something that I'm going to be needing to learn a little bit more is, rather than kind of getting of uh, knowing everything that you've got to get done and trying to do it yourself, um, learning how to uh, to communicate, uh, the way that you need something to be done, and and uh and um to be able to get, have those tasks done, is, is, uh, is is a really valuable um knowledge and and uh and uh, and asset for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one of the great transitions as a business owner is when you can move from the question how can I do something? To who can I get to do it? Yes, yeah that's a great transition. Let me what do you? I mean, you've been a partner for a little while. What are some of the misconceptions about being a partner in the marketplace?
Speaker 2:I think my answer would be limited really just to the architecture field, but maybe in the professional services field as a whole.
Speaker 2:But I think that a common misconception that I would think is that and it's very true what you said about the partners kind of bringing in work and finding the leads and stuff like that, but at least in the way that we've set it up at Arca is we may be responsible for that and that is kind of the biggest transition from being an employee to a partner is that that responsibility and burden to to generate the work, but we still are just as involved in the execution of the work.
Speaker 2:So I think, and that's kind of where, when Brian and Alan started ARCA and wanted to retain some of those the pros of that kind of larger regional corporate business model but then get rid of some of the cons, alan had led that Asheville office and his entire kind of not entire, but the vast majority of his workload was to maintain those relationships and bring in new work and had really lost that hands-on aspect of the design tasks that we all kind of love so much. And with at least with the way that we've set it up at AR, at arc, where all the partners are certainly responsible for bringing in work, but we remain, and uh, intimately involved with the, the design process, with each, with each project yeah, and I love that.
Speaker 1:Hey, what do you attribute your growth to?
Speaker 2:in our case, I would say that it's definitely just the level of service and quality of service provided. And we talk about growth often and how we want to approach it, because I think that a lot of times, growth is seen as adding employees or needing to get more office space and stuff like that, and we're at a breaking point where we need to do that for sure. But we've certainly seen growth in terms of revenue, and not only the number of projects that we're working on, but the quality of projects that we're working on is a big thing. But I think that we attribute that to the quality of service that we provide and being able to do it in a timely and cost-effective manner, I think, in terms of the value that's provided.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I like it. It always comes up that there's. You know, everybody thinks there's a difference between you know there's a big contrast between business and personal life.
Speaker 2:So how do you balance the demands of business and your personal life? That's another thing where I think that our model is a little bit different than a lot of other architecture firm models, or at least what I had come to expect coming out of school and I I my um first job out of school was at architecture design, but I'd worked at a number of architecture firms um while I was in school and and uh to to uh to get me through that time as well. But um there, it was pretty apparent in my uh initial interviews with with the company that there was a uh an abnormal um emphasis placed on home life and family, which was very attractive to me as someone who that that's is my number one priority. For sure. Um have a wife and two, two girls, two daughters at home and another one on the way.
Speaker 1:And congratulations. That's awesome, thank you, yeah.
Speaker 2:Thanks, but um that, um, yeah, I'm very blessed to be in a, in an office where there is not the expectation that my family suffer um for uh, in in in the name of, of, of my business or what I've got going on, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a great. That's a great to me, that's a great advertisement for Archer, because they've you've created a culture there that allows for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, and it's it. It at the risk of going off in a little bit of a tangent, my wife is also an architect and is one of our architects here at Arca Design, but when our first daughter was born, she had spent the kind of normal 12-week maternity leave at home and she was getting ready to have to come back into the office. And at the time I was not a partner and one of our founding partners, brian was asking me how my wife Cindy felt about coming back into the office, and at the time I was. I was not a partner and uh, or one of our founding partners. Brian was asking me how my wife Cindy felt about coming back into the office. I said oh, you know, she's uh, some days she's excited about it and some days it's tragic the thought of of uh having to leave the baby and not be with her, and this was in 2018.
Speaker 2:Um, so, before COVID and all that kind of stuff and off the cuff, you just say well, you know, if she wants to, she can just work from home until the baby's a year old and that'll be fine. We'll see where it goes. So that was before the work from home craze and all that. And you know that's not an employee handbook or anything like that. That's just the leadership of our firm prioritizing our family health. The leadership of our firm prioritizing our family health. And that's just one example of many ways that our company has prioritized our personal lives, and I think that that reflects in the care that we bring into our work and into each project.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it goes to my next question a little bit. But how do you and maybe this hasn't come up yet for you, but what do you look for in employees?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. We've been talking about that a little bit recently. We've had the same. So the only employees that we brought on since I've become a partner have been part time, so, like some renters, and I think that for us, with only having five people, culture fit is a big thing. Yeah, and because we've been working together for or 10, at least David and Brian and I are the current partners. We've all been working together for 10 years and Alan and Brian have been working together for I don't even know how long, probably 20.
Speaker 2:And not that we want to create a homogenous work culture, but there's a rapport that we would want to maintain.
Speaker 2:So culture fit is is a good, is a big thing, and in our field of design, talent is is really the biggest thing. I mean, when I was in school, I had really explored the possibility of going into um, get my uh postgraduate degree and uh, at the time I was contemplating uh one to potentially pursue being a professor, uh, which would require that. But when it became clear to me that I really just wanted to practice, through counsel from some other architects and others, they advised me that the postgraduate was not necessarily essential in terms of marketability in the professional environment. Not that there's not benefit to that. There certainly is. But if we're evaluating two applicants for a job and one doesn't have as impressive of a portfolio but has a master's degree, and another has all the credentials that they need, but it's a bachelor's degree, but they have a really impressive portfolio and a good work product, then we're going to lean more towards the design, talent and work product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, the results matter, right? Sure, yeah, yeah, let's go to the quick fire round. So I've got this is just like a couple of sentences on each topic. The BEPIC is a acronym that we came up with a number of years ago, that we it's helpful for success, but so the B stands for bring the energy. So what are your thoughts around energy?
Speaker 2:I think that in our case where I would say that at times I can be lacking, for sure, but I think that it's important we can be a pretty restrained group in our office but to bring the energy and excitement to each project and each problem that needs to be solved I mean, that's really what most careers are, but that certainly rings true in architecture is problem solving, and if you don't approach each problem with the same enthusiasm, then you're not going to. You risk not finding as a successful solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there's different forms of energy. Right, it doesn't have to be like rah-rah all the time, but you can bring good energy to, like you said, solving a problem or designing a space or a building or whatever. So I think it's great, all right. So what's your thought about E is education. What's your thought about education?
Speaker 2:Yeah, in terms of like a continuing aspect or education as a training tool.
Speaker 1:It can be anything. I mean, it's about you know. You know when we, when we came up with this, the idea was you know that I was looking for an acronym for success Like what, what are some of the characteristics of very successful people? And one of them I found was that they were continuously educating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, great, yeah, I mean there's. I saw one of your previous episodes. You were talking with a guy that, funny enough, his office was kind of down the same road but does a construction. Continuing education programs yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:In architecture there's some pretty strenuous, strenuous but pretty strict outlines in terms of what we have to fulfill on a continuing education standpoint. I think a lot of times that can result in just kind of checking a box and not necessarily being super fruitful. Continuing education that I try to prioritize that wouldn't necessarily be um, uh, credentialed in any way is uh, in our, in our field, uh, precedent study. So I try to take time, uh, not necessarily on a daily basis, but try to be intentional about taking time and looking at work that other architects around the world are are doing, um, to kind of get inspired by what other folks are doing, find other ways to solve problems or other types of materials that people are using, so that we don't just get into solving problems the same way over and over again. And so I think that would be one way that I, at least in my aspect, try to focus on maintaining an education and keeping tabs on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. I mean there's the education that you have to have, which is the, you know, the continuing education credits that you have in your profession. That rarely is enough for success. That's just enough to keep you certified as an actual practicing architect, and there's a lot of that in a lot of professions. And I think I know in my early career I took the education that came to me and I didn't do a lot of self education. So I applaud you for doing this. You know, doing the proactive self education that's going to help you be more successful in your business, whether that's technical or business education or whatever it is. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, education is a funny thing in architecture. I had the first architect that I worked for when I was in school told me something that I don't think I'll ever forget. He said architects are poorly educated but highly trained. Told me something that I don't think I'll ever forget. He said architects are poorly educated but highly trained. But so in architecture there's a a pretty, a pretty strenuous education that we have to get to, to get the the accredited degrees to be able to, to continue on in our path to licensure, and it's it's a great process, um process.
Speaker 2:Some people um hate it and some people love it, just with what's asked of you. But really you spend five or six years focusing on what ends up being about 15, 10 and 15% of, I think, what actually the actual day-to-day being an architect is, so that that education is really entirely, almost entirely focused on the conceptual design aspect, and then so really you spend a long period of time focused on that and then when you get done with school and start your required internship and exam period, that's you really kind of hit the ground running with your education Then because there's so much more in the technical aspect and climate relations and contract negotiations and stuff like that. That is a huge part of what we do on the day to day, that we don't necessarily get educated as good as we probably should in school, I would say.
Speaker 1:But the school is great, but the real education starts after school. Yeah for sure. Yeah, yeah. No, I like it All right. The P in Epic is planning and it seems like an appropriate thing to talk about as an architect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, planning man, that's a noun and an adjective in our sorry, a noun and a verb in our field, definitely. I mean, I definitely immediately jumped to kind of master planning, which is an aspect of something that we will do for clients, often at the beginning stages of a project and often in collaboration with other consultants, engineers and landscape architects. But, yeah, that's, that's a, that's one, that's that's wide arching for sure. I mean, planning really branches into what I would say we do on a on a daily basis, for sure. But but yeah, planning in terms of the, the, the design process as a whole, what we're, what we're trying to accomplish with each phase, yeah, that's a big one for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so AI is inspiration. So where do you find inspiration?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I kind of touched on that with the education piece. I mean, I, I personally find it by uh, appreciating and looking at work of other architects that I admire, um and uh, other folks like I think some other people in our office might find it more by walking around, uh, some of our communities like B think some other people in our office might find it more by walking around some of our communities like Biltmore Village and some of the areas at Asheville where we have beautiful pieces of preserved historic architecture. But yeah, that's one of the things that's really neat about our field is, know, you're surrounded by it all the time. I read, I read a quote once, uh it was, it was this book that was.
Speaker 2:Uh, I think it was called interviews in new york or something, where they would just interview random people and they asked this woman what her favorite art form was and uh, in which that that's kind of a contentious debate within the architecture field is whether architecture is in fact in an art form or not, which, you know, one of those arguments can can kind of come across as a little bit more pretentious, but her reason for saying that architecture was her favorite art form was because everybody has a frame of reference for it, um.
Speaker 2:So, like, there's art and music and everybody um has experienced things in different ways, but everybody experiences and has a frame of reference for architecture in a pretty intimate way and we try to keep that in mind when we're working on smaller scale projects like houses. I work on the majority of our residential work in our firm and it's always I always try to prioritize that being a collaborative effort, because while I'm the, I may be the design professional. The people that I'm designing the house for have lived in a number of houses throughout their lives and have very valid perspectives on what they find to be successful and unsuccessful. So, yeah, definitely keep an open mind in terms of what they bring to the table and what they might suggest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. I think I mean, one of the cool things about architecture to me is it's art and it's functional, so it's not just you know there's, there's. To me that's great because that, that may that mean. That's the sort of intersection of form and function. You know it's a great thing. All right, the C in EPIC is commitment. What are your thoughts around committing?
Speaker 2:and commitment. I mean, I was raised to value that extremely. So, yeah, it's kind of a just a given thing If you, if you commit to to perform a task or or to to meet someone's, to meet someone's needs on a on a client relation basis, it's just you kind of, you have to have to see that through and it's kind of hard to imagine that not being the case. I mean, it's I don't really know of a viable alternative.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it, love it. Yeah, it's a sort of way of life. You do what you're saying and I love that. Yeah, it's a way of life for you. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, it's not a. The decision's been made.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I's not a it's not a.
Speaker 1:It's the decisions been made, mm? Hmm, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:So what words of advice would you give to other professionals or other business owners who are looking to grow?
Speaker 2:Uh, man, while the and I think that highlights to me that what is has kind of maybe been a something that we've overlooked in our growth, like what we were talking about earlier with with the marketing aspect, um, I would imagine that young business owners like myself that maybe don't have the structure that's been established under them myself that maybe don't have the structure that's been established under them Like I've been fortunate to have here with ARCA, might, might need fill the need to prioritize marketing campaigns or or really kind of doing big pushes on social media and catchy stuff like that. But I would say, focus on your craft, you know, like really hone in on what it is that you do, and that your number one marketing tool should be to to perform your craft as good as possible.
Speaker 1:I love that. Perform your craft as best you can. I love that. Yeah, yeah, it's an it's. It's an interesting one. In construction I have a lot. We have a lot of clients in building and construction professional services, but you do have to do some self-promotion For sure. I've known plenty of builders who are great builders, who didn't make it because the marketing just wasn't good enough. They didn't, or they were too perfectionistic. It's an interesting one.
Speaker 1:So, let's wrap it up here. What is the best way for someone to get in touch with you? Somebody wants to do business or partner with you, or they need some architectural services. What is the best way for them to get a hold of you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say just to um, reach out to us via our. Our website is arca, the arca dash designcom. Um, there's a, there's a contact tab there where it'll send to to kind of our general email. My, my personal email is natewebster at arca-designcom. Um, and yeah, like I don't think I really touched on it, great, but we're a smaller architecture firm. We'll work on everything from a small two-bedroom house to we did the Asheville Art Museum downtown, so $30 million art museum to 30, or, sorry, $20 million art museum to $30 million medical manufacturing plant. We really kind of have a wide, wide range of uh of of projects that we that we work on. Um, so really no, um, no project is is off the table. But yeah, we're always eager to to do what we can to improve the beauty of our built environment. Um, and we try to approach each project with that same level of care.
Speaker 1:No, I love that. Yeah, I love that. That is, I mean, it's one of the advantages of being nimble. You can decide, hey, do we want to do this project or not? And is it a good project for us? Is it a good project for our communities? Yeah, it's a good project for the client, so it's a win-win-win.
Speaker 2:I guess yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Hey, so fantastic. Thanks for being part of us community and for all you're doing. We certainly are looking forward to seeing your continued growth. Hey, thanks for that and until next time all the best.