We've released over 100 episodes now, so if you're

new to the show, that is a lot of content to wade through.

So in this episode, I cover how to quickly filter through all of our episodes to

find the content that you really need.

I shine the spotlight on our business strategy and growth themed

episodes, And I uncover a hidden gem that you might have missed

and stick around to the end where I'll share one of my personal favorites.

Welcome to Architecture Business Club, the show that helps you build

a better business in architecture so you can enjoy more freedom,

flexibility, and fulfillment.

I'm John Clayton, and if you're joining us for the first time, don't forget

to subscribe or hit that follow button so you never miss another episode.

we've got over 100 episodes now.

I think we we're approaching 120 at the time of recording this one.

And nearly all of those episodes are all still relevant and really

useful, but I think it can be difficult to know where to start.

It may be overwhelming, particularly if you are new to the show.

If you've recently discovered the show.

That can be a lot when you've got quite a big back catalog and often it

you can end up kind of defaulting to just checking out the recent episodes,

which I, I totally understand.

But from my point of view, there are some fantastic episodes that

we've, um, we've made that just make it overlooks just because they

weren't, they weren't made recently.

To fix this problem, we've added episode categories to our website.

So if you head over to architecture business club.com, you'll find it

much, much easier to filter through our back catalog of episodes so

that you can find the episodes that are most relevant for you.

So, just to give you a quick overview of those categories, I'm not gonna go into

all the categories in detail because, um, I think we've, we've got around

a, a dozen or so different categories.

'cause as I, as I mentioned earlier, we've, we've released

a lot of episodes now.

Um, but just to give you a brief flavor of, of the types of themes

that we cover on this show.

We have got category on business strategy and growth marketing and lead generation.

Personal brand and visibility.

Sales, pricing and getting paid systems, tools and automations,

mindset, wellbeing and resilience.

Career paths and practice journeys.

Content PR and podcasting industry events and the bigger picture

community and the podcast.

And last but not least, team outsourcing and collaboration.

Wow.

Um, this was interesting exercise for me actually, because when you produce in.

Content regularly, and you produce that kind of volume of it, sometimes you can

forget the, the work that you've done.

And, um, going back and looking at some of those old episodes and

then trying to categorize it, come up with those kind of different

categories to segment everything, make it a bit more accessible for you.

It really made me realize what a valuable back catalog we've got here and made

me want to, to shine the spotlight on, on some of those past episodes and kind

of bring them back to life, really.

Um, mainly because I feel that there's a lot of content there that's gonna

be extremely useful for you, that you just may not have discovered.

So I thought that now, and then what I would do is I would shine the

spotlight on one of those categories just to give you a flavor of some of

the content that's there and let you know what you might be missing out on.

So let's start with.

Business strategy and growth.

So this category is really all about practical thinking so that

you can run a better business.

So it's really about giving you some of the, the foundations that you need.

So in that category, our most downloaded episode to date is.

Launch your way to success, no more feast and famine, with Sigrun.

This was a great episode.

So in this episode, I'm joined by Sigrun.

So it's an interview episode.

Sigrun is an award-winning business coach, bestselling author, and entrepreneur,

who explains how to use launches as part of your marketing strategy so that you

can escape that feast and famine cycle that a lot of service-based business

owners find themselves stuck in.

So this episode would be great for you if you sell the same service

all year round and you want to learn how to create some genuine urgency.

For people to buy from you, which often, that can be really difficult when you have

something like architectural services.

Maybe you, you have the same, um, service offering round, round, the whole year.

It can be tricky to think, well, how do we kind of create this sense of urgency there

when it's like an always available service and it is the same thing year round.

Sigrun helps you with all of that in this episode.

Here's a quick clip.

A launch is a marketing campaign, where do you create excitement

for the product or the service?

Ideally ahead of time so that when it's available for purchase that they

can make a lot of sales in less time.

And this is what people do in online business.

Uh, we use launches to sell programs, online programs, online courses,

uh, anything we sell really.

Because if you don't launch, you know, if something is available

all the time and you don't announce to people what's special about it,

or there's no limited edition or, or there's no sense of urgency.

Well, then you're going to think to yourself, I can buy it tomorrow.

I can buy it next week.

I can buy it next year.

And you forget about it.

You don't buy it.

I also wanted to highlight a hidden gem that you might have missed.

Um, so I'm gonna pick one from this particular episode category

of business strategy and growth.

Um, the episode that I've picked is navigating your Business

Journey with quarterly Planning.

This was episode 13, maybe unlucky 13.

I don't feel it's had perhaps that the love that, um, it deserved.

It is a really practical episode.

In this episode I talk about strategic business planning.

Okay, so maybe, maybe not the most exciting sounding topic,

but this is really useful.

And it talks about, um, how to break your year down into quarterly chunks

so that you can better plan your business activities for the year.

You can make easier course corrections and.

You can see some real results in your business over a more manageable 90 day

period rather than, you know, like one of those long-term business plans, one year,

three year, five year, that sort of thing.

So this episode's gonna be great for you if you're feeling perhaps

a bit rudderless, or maybe you just need some help to get

started with business planning.

Here's a quick clip.

Let's imagine you're planning a long journey.

Let's say you are going to go on a road trip across Europe, which if you are.

I'm very jealous.

I'd love to do a road trip across Europe.

It's a long while since my backpacking days.

But that that's, uh, a story for another day.

If you're planning a big road trip across Europe, it's much easier to plan

a long journey like that in stages.

That way you can focus on one stage at a time rather than the entire journey.

And if circumstances change, it's easier to make a course correction

for one stage of that journey than to replan the whole trip.

So think of each quarter of the year as a stage or leg in your

overall journey for this year.

To get to that destination, that, that big goal that you've set for

yourself and your business this year.

90 days.

It's it's a more manageable chunk of time to plan ahead.

You likely to know what you've got going on over the next three months

but probably don't know everything that's in store for your whole year.

But it's also long enough to see some real results in your business from the efforts

that you've made over the past 90 days.

Now it is time for me to choose.

My own favorite from this category of episodes.

This, this is really tough.

This is really tough to decide because we've got some amazing

episodes in this category.

I, I always enjoy my conversations with Brian McCartney from Archmark

and, um, Ray Brown from ArchiBiz.

I had a great early conversation with Kris Baxter from Studio

11 Architecture, um, which was surprisingly touching that episode.

But.

I think my personal favorite from this particular category is 10 lessons

from 10 years as a sole practitioner.

So this was episode 17, so this was released quite some time ago,

but in this episode, I share 10 key lessons from my own personal

experiences as a sole practitioner.

I talk about learning from my many mistakes, knowing your numbers,

delegation, perfectionism, finding joy in your business, and the

importance of connection and community.

I honestly get a bit vulnerable about the challenges of running your own business.

So this episode is very personal to me.

And that's why I've chosen it as my favorite episode from that category.

This episode's gonna be great for you if you're a sole practitioner,

a freelancer, or if you're thinking about starting your own business, or

if you've ever found yourself comparing yourself to others and thought they seem

to be doing this far better than me.

I would just say, don't worry about that, because despite appearances, many of the

people are winging it and some of them honestly are gonna be a complete hot mess.

Not that you'll, you'll see that from their social media feeds.

So, um, yeah, go easy on yourself.

Here's a quick clip.

I'd love to tell you that everything worked out perfectly.

That it's all been a roaring success.

But in truth over the last 10 years as a sole practitioner, I've

personally found it really hard.

And made a lot of mistakes along the way.

Like when I spent nearly a grand on brochure ads that led to zero leads.

Or the time I rushed into outsourcing a drawing package for the

provider's work to be total rubbish.

Or the time I spent months planning a rebrand and a significant chunk

of cash on a brand new website.

Which with hindsight, was totally unnecessary at that time.

Or when I took on a difficult client, even though my gut was telling me

otherwise, Inevitably there were problems and I totally mishandled it.

And then I got really stressed out trying to resolve them.

Some mistakes have been big, some have been small.

You will make mistakes running your business.

So don't beat yourself up about it.

Learn from your mistakes, fail fast and move on.

So I hope you've enjoyed this whistle stop tour through some of our past

episodes, and now that you know how to filter through the episodes

more easily, remember, just head to architecturebusinessclub.com

to be able to find all of our episodes and those episode categories so that you

can filter through and find the content that best meets your needs right now.

I may revisit another one of those categories in the future, um, and

shine the spotlight on some other episodes that may have been overlooked.

Alright, bye for now.