William Reid: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and no, you did not click the wrong link. It is Bill Reid with The Awakened Homeowner, and I'm not in my normal studio because this is my favorite studio. I'm up here in the Sierra Nevada mountains north of the Truckee Tahoe area in an area called Smith Lake. A high alpine lake where I come up with ideas for you to tackle your project.

Climbing mountains isn't much different than tackling a project, so I figured why not? Let's get started with it. Over the past month or so, as if you've been listening and watching, I've been preparing you for your climb, for your hike, and I'm gonna continue on with that mission in this next series.

But hiking up a steep climb is not much different than tackling a project. And the more prepared you are, the more successful you're gonna be. And honestly, most people don't prepare. They just dive right in and end up with a lot of problems. [00:01:00] So the next series is called The World of Design. And it's when, if you look at the book, the, it's over half the book because it's gotta be the most important aspect of a project because this is where all of your thoughts and ideas and inspirations are funneled into a set of construction documents to have someone achieve your dream for you.

And that's where the designers come in. So the world of design. It is made up of a few segments that we're gonna go through, and the first one is called Understanding designers, understanding Architects and Understanding Design Professionals. And there's a variety of different design professionals that will apply to your project.

It could be an architect, a residential designer. Some people use draftsmen or drafts persons. And interior designers and we tackle that and I go through all of the different little ins and outs of who they are, what type of characters they [00:02:00] are, and why that's important to you when it comes to deciding who you're gonna use.

The next the next one is how do you go about coming to an agreement with an architect? A lot of architects and designers have standard design agreements that they use, but there's different varieties of them, and they're usually tailored to different types of projects or different types of clientele.

So it's important that you understand the differences between those so that you can ask the right questions. Once we understand the architects, the design professionals, and how you engage with them, the next thing is called the design process. And this isn't something that I. Invented. This is a methodology that professional architects and designers use.

It's a stepping stone approach that they use to navigate through the entire design process from the day that you meet them to a set of completed working drawings and specifications. So we're gonna, we're gonna go through [00:03:00] that. And understand the best way to engage with architects. After that, we get into a real fun one called design limitations.

So before you even start your project, before you even call an architect, you already have design limitations that are built in. Most of them stem from your city or county. Government, not to mention the budget. We know that's gonna be a constraint, but there's certain rules and regulations that apply, a lot of 'em that apply to especially new construction projects or substantial remodels or renovations.

So I'm gonna get into that with you so that you can understand what's lurking behind the surface or behind that mountain over there that could take you out. And then after that I'm gonna introduce. Understanding plans. Some people used to call 'em blueprints, but they're plans. It's the deliverable that your architects, designers, interior [00:04:00] designers provide to you and your contractor, your builder, to actually execute your plan, their plan of the project.

And that's gonna be a multi episode. Series, which will probably be move over to more of a webinar presentation so that I can show you the ins and outs of the plans. The other one that comes to mind that we're gonna cover is approvals and permits. So all of this work that goes on from the day of the inspiration to creating the design and plans.

It's ultimately working towards submitting them to your city or county, and it's good for you to know that what that process is like and what is required to go through that process. Even if you're a D Iyer or an owner builder, and you're gonna be coordinating a lot of this yourself, it's important for you to know this so that you can circumvent any challenges that come into play.

A lot of this, all of this is covered in [00:05:00] the book, but this is my chance to elaborate on all of the content I tried to get in the book and teach you how to do the best that you can with your project. The first series, the discovery series, was a really important kind of, sitting on your couch, coming up with the ideas.

Studying your finances, creating a package so that you can then go to your search for your design professionals. We're not ready yet. We want, I want you to learn about them before you go searching for them, and then you can go out and start hunting for the right design professional. 'cause you'll know a lot more when you start to ask the right questions.

Now this is just an introduction to the world of design. And I might wrap this up in, in the inside studio to go through the main headings so that you can understand what to expect. And then the next episode, we'll [00:06:00] start with understanding design professionals. So welcome to my studio this whole summer, you're gonna see different hikes throughout the Northern Sierra Nevada Mountain ranges from Grey Eagle, California to Lake Almanor, California.

And I'm gonna be thinking about you and your project and coming up with ideas and strategies for you to tackle it. So I'll see you on the inside studio and we'll go through a little bit more detail before we dive in. Thanks. .

all right, everybody, I'm back in the studio now and we're gonna continue on discussing this next series and the podcast called The World of Design. The World the design aspect of a project is probably one of the more undervalued. And most important parts of a project, you can see it all over the internet.

People talking about, oh, I can get a design done for a dollar a [00:07:00] square foot, and all these crazy things. When in reality those are the people that you hear a year later complaining on the internet that their project was over, budget didn't come out the way they wanted, their contractor didn't do a good job.

And some of those stories are true. Because they hired a poor contractor or whatever. But I'm telling you right now, in 35 years of coordinating the design and construction of projects, if you start off with a poor design, meaning inadequate details, incomplete details, wrong details lack of specifications of materials.

I hired a inadequate designer, went with the cheapest designer. There's a million ways you can screw up, and we're gonna try to avoid that with this conversation today. Now, today is gonna be an introduction to what I'm gonna be covering the goal here is to educate you on all aspects [00:08:00] of the design world.

And I'm gonna go through each of those chapters with you so that you can understand what to expect in the upcoming series. My goal here is to educate you to the point where you can control the project. From day one, you can share and set your expectations with your designer so that you can achieve the ultimate goal, your dream home.

So in my book, in fact, I have a copy of it right here. You'll notice that on the title, it's called Orchestrate Your Dream Home, and you can even see a little picture of a conductor on there. The reason I did that, people thought I was a little nuts, but that's what you are, is you have an orchestra of people and companies.

Services that you're going to be conducting to get your project done. Now, you don't necessarily have to be the conductor on the podium. You can elect to have [00:09:00] somebody else do that for you, and your architect can be one of the best ones to do that. So keep in mind that depending on how you tackle the project.

You can be the conductor or you can have somebody else be your conductor. But there's a whole series of musicians in there that from the architects and the interior designers and the consultants and the material suppliers and your contractors and subcontractors, these are all people that have to be coordinated to do.

A custom home project or a large scale remodel renovation with remodels and renovations being even more complicated than the new construction sometimes. So like I said earlier, I've, I employed my own design staff and my own construction staff, and. We carried the projects all the way through to the end, so I have a really deep understanding of what it takes to cross over from [00:10:00] design into construction, which is the biggest handoff in this business, to make sure that what's getting built was feasible in design and expected by the homeowner.

Just keeping, keep that in mind that my mindset is custom home building, large scale remodels, medium sized remodels, even little remodels. But that's a lot of what I did was tear complete homes down, rebuild them for mostly high tech people that had a high level of attention to detail, which turned me into a little bit of a detail freak.

So just think about it this way, you're the conductor. You may not know how to play the violin, but you sure know when it sounds funny, and that's the idea here. The idea is for you to get to know just enough so you can know when it sounds funny, and then you can ask even more questions or don't hire those people or don't use that product.

So keep in mind that's [00:11:00] what we're doing here is teaching you how to be a conductor or. If you decide to have your architect be your conductor, which a lot of people do, or sometimes you can hire an owner agent, which for large scale projects, they're your conductor. It doesn't matter. You need to know how to either direct the conductor, feed them the information they need, write the music, and then understand what they're doing.

So that's the, idea here. So let's move into. What design really is so design. Think about design as a funnel. So you've maybe even for years have been thinking about a project you've actually saved a million pictures of idea books and inspirations on Pinterest and HOUZZ and wherever, hopefully, so that you can convey your expectations to your designer.

There's a couple things about that. Number one, it's really easy, honestly to come up with concepts and ideas, both on [00:12:00] the homeowner's side 'cause you love this picture. And even on the architect or designer's side, you can see a picture, an inspiration. I go, I love it, I want it, but. It's about how you design the details to achieve it and make the proper decisions to achieve it.

And this is gonna tie directly into the quality of the designer that you hire. So the design process is a funnel where all of this information early on, and then as it gets deeper and deeper into the design process, it starts funneling into. Kind of the work product of your architect, your interior designer, residential designer.

We're gonna talk a little bit about those differences and it's funneling into their output, which is a complete set of plans, construction documents and specifications so that you visualize yourself handing off a role of plans and a printout of [00:13:00] specifications to. A couple contractors and saying, here is my project.

Everything is specified here. Please, could you please provide a proposal to build it? That's the goal here. Most people don't do it. Most people rush through the process, get the bare minimum, and then get costs that are all over the place and make uninformed decisions and pick the crappiest contractor 'cause they have the best price, and then pay the price later happens.

I dunno, probably more often than not, and we don't want you to be that. We want you to do it properly. And by the way, it doesn't cost more to do it properly. I'm a firm believer in that if you invest in proper design, professional design. You take the time to do it, you're probably gonna do a project cheaper than your neighbor who hired an architect for half the price and started to pick out the materials during the project.

You'll probably do it for less expensive, [00:14:00] and you'll probably do it faster than the guys is piecing it together because they thought they were saving money. So keep that in mind that this is a big one to hard, it's hard to get your hands into it or onto it. Because the numbers in the beginning look really big to hire a professional architect or designer to do your project.

But you have to understand that if you have to pay $20,000 more to get a, a qualified architect, I guarantee you they're gonna save you money in the long haul. And when you walk and you open up your new front door. You're going to feel, get that feeling because they cared and they dro they provided the details necessary early enough for your builder to do a good job.

So keep that in mind that this design world is churning up all of these ingredients and outputting a complete set of plans and specifications. Another thing I want you to keep in the back of your mind too, is the [00:15:00] quality of design. Begins with you, and we already touched on all that in the discovery phase.

The quality of design that your architect outputs is heavily dependent on you and your input from the discovery phase, setting the expectations, letting 'em know who you are, talking about your property. Going through your vision spec ideas, sharing those, and taking a hard look at the budget. If you can do all that in the beginning, before you even call 'em, you've already started the design, you didn't even know it because they're gonna leap forward.

Pass your neighbor who hired the guy for a dollar a square foot or whatever, and kick his ass because you have got, you know what together on your project. So what makes a really good designer, there's a lot of things, but some of the things that really stick out is a person that [00:16:00] understands your wants and needs and wishes.

And what that all boils down to is listening. One of the first ways you're gonna be able to gauge a person that you're gonna want to interact with on your project for sometimes years is, are they listening? Are they good listeners? And the only way you're gonna be able to figure that out is how they respond with their commentary and maybe even their deliverables early on, so you can understand if they're really getting it.

The next thing that a di a qualified designer does, architect, interior designer, is then they tap into their knowledge, their experience, and then the tools that they have. And the reason there's three components is knowledge is all of the things that they've learned. Whether it's formal training and then actually implementing their designs in the field, and then experience is the result of that, of what to do and what not to do, [00:17:00] frankly.

And what they can do to tailor their services and the products they recommend to you because of their experience. Coupled with their knowledge. And then tools is another really important one. How well are your architects and designers gonna be able to articulate their ideas to you so that you can understand 'em?

We're gonna get into all that later in the first part of this series, but I just wanted to touch on that. And then the third element of an A, a good architect and a designer. Is how well they shepherded you through the process, through the design process. How comfortable are they making you feel? How well are they responding to your wants and needs and wishes and ideas?

And then even during construction, you have the option with many design professionals to hire them as a separate deal to do what's called construction administration or follow you all the way through the project. So this is [00:18:00] another one you need to know about because you hire an architect to see your project all the way through, and you think, oh, I'm gonna pay my architect 10 grand to, to watch my project get built.

Let me tell you something. They will pick up on things they're seeing their design go into play. Then they'll pick up on things that maybe are not done properly or that could be done better. You can even have them review invoicing and so on. That's a whole nother topic but how well an architect guides you through that.

So that's just a brief summary of what we're gonna be talking about in the very first segment of this series called Understanding Design Professionals. So the primary designers of your project are going to be your architect. A residential designer and an interior designer. Now there's a difference between architect and residential designer.

Interior designer is pretty obvious, but we'll talk about that too. But there's some variables and differences there. But your architect, your [00:19:00] main designer, is going to be the person that you really latch onto to help you with your project. The next little tier of design professionals is. The consultants, so the architects don't do everything, and they bring in a series of consultants to help them develop the plans for the project.

A good example is a structural engineer or a civil engineer, and we'll talk about that too. I. And there's another like we call the supporting cast, which could be arborist or energy experts or solar contractors, those kind of consultants as well. So there's kinda like this three tier. You've got your main designer that you're gonna be dependent on, that you're gonna be interfacing with the most.

You've got the key consultants and then you have the supporting cast. Just keep in mind as we work our way through this summary, or this introduction I'll call it, is this is about intelligently investing time and money early on in the project [00:20:00] so that you can have a positive output. It's hard to do, I know because you got one guy says, oh, I'll do your whole set of plans for $5,000, but the next guy says it's gonna cost you $35,000.

And you're like, wait, whoa, wait a minute. I think I already know what I want, so I'm gonna go with a $5,000 guy. Some plans, I've done projects where plans have cost $300,000, so that's a big one, obviously, but don't just immediately rule out the $35,000 guy because you think it costs too much and they shouldn't be charging that.

That much. What do you know? Do you know? I don't think you probably do know enough to make that determination until you dive into it. The $5,000 guy is a drafts person. He's not an architect. If he's an architect charging $5,000, he won't be around long, much longer. So these are people that aren't designers.

These are people that you, they regurgitate to you what you provide to them. And if you think you know what [00:21:00] you're doing great. Give it a shot. So that's the key thing. We're investing and if a guy costs you 20 or 30 grand more on a 500 or a million dollar project, you're talking about a minuscule amount to get the results that you want.

So I can't underscore that enough. So your architect, your design team is a team. And you're part of it. You are in the middle of it. We're working with them to guide them on what you do know. What you do know is you want a new home. What you do know is you want to transform your new home or into a new home to remodel or run a renovation, and that's you're part of the team.

And the better you do, the better team player you are. The better you do, the more cost effective your design's gonna cost 'cause you're not having people restart over and over again, and you are part of that core team, the architect, and the other one is the interior designer. [00:22:00] The interior designer is gonna be a key player.

I wouldn't say very many projects or a majority of the projects have actual dedicated interior designers on 'em. It depends on the scale. I'm trying to cover all bases here from, multimillion dollar custom homes to, a hundred thousand dollar renovation. So in some cases, you may not need in a full fledged interior designer, but don't rule it out if you're doing a kitchen design, kitchen, bath, kitchen, and bathroom remodel.

Don't be afraid to hire a certified kitchen and bath designer to help you design the project. Don't expect to just pull something off Pinterest and download a free software application and get to where you want to get. You're gonna, you're gonna be miserable and yeah, maybe you'll spend less money. But did you achieve that goal?

The pictures that you were swiping through or you're laying in bed in the middle of the night, did you achieve those goals? Probably not. And then you chalk it up to experience and then you wait till the next home and you do it again. Spend some money [00:23:00] on design and you will probably not spend any more money on the project, and it will be, it will meet your expectations.

So what we're gonna cover in this series is we're gonna talk about the design team. We're gonna talk about the methods, the agreements. Things like that. We're gonna talk about the design process, a methodical approach. I'll touch on that one more time, and we're gonna talk about how you monitor your budget during the design phase so that you don't get blown away deep into the design process.

A couple other things that we're gonna talk about is some of the details that you need to be aware of in the design process that can undermine. Many things of a project. So keep that in mind. We're gonna touch on that and then how a project is managed during the design process. So architects. So architects, we're gonna talk about the primary design professionals for a minute.

[00:24:00] Architects, you for sure need one when you're doing a new construction project major structural changes to a home. And really complex projects, it's a given for the most part that you need an architect. Now some people try to pull it off with what's called a residential designer, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

But for the most part, you're building a new custom home or doing a major renovation start. We're gonna start with an architect and teaching you about architects and what they're all about. Remember the architects bring. A lot more to the table than any other designer. When it comes to the big vision, the understanding of architectural styles, the interpretation of those, and translation of those into your style.

The design aspect is extremely strong with professional qualified architects. Some of the other designers that are gonna come into play are not, but you may not need [00:25:00] that we're gonna default to somebody who knows what they're doing. Architects also have a much better understanding of the structural aspects of a project.

So when an architect is conceptualizing a design, they do think in the back of their mind the good ones. Is this even gonna be possible? Is this realistic? Do I have to put a 40 foot steel beam here to make it work? Is that gonna cost a million dollars? They do think about that. It's not necessarily value engineering at that point yet, but it's more about they go off of their knowledge base and their experience.

A lot of architects, when they study, they kind of gravitate towards. They'll either gravitate towards the design side or the math side of the engineering. 'cause structural engineers are fully capable of drawing entire homes. They can design houses, but their tendency is not to do take on projects like that because they're more of a math mind.

And a lot [00:26:00] of times, architects and structural engineers work together on project effect most of the time. So architects are gonna cost more. And that's because they're legit. They have study, they have credentials in architecture. They have a licensure in architecture and they most often have staff.

So these are, this is legit companies that know what they're doing. And the really good ones have staff where they have their disciplines. And the really evolved ones are focused on design and client relations, and they have staff doing a lot of the drawings and details, and they're a, actually the director of the design, if you will.

So keep that in mind. One that you do wanna be careful though, is when you do start talking with architects, just make sure that they're well versed in residential. 'cause sometimes if you bring in an architect that does it all. We do commercial, we do industrial, we do residential. Be careful there because you're really gonna want somebody that [00:27:00] focuses on residential construction.

A hundred percent in my opinion. But unless they have different departments. So now there's another one called residential designers, and we're going to, we're gonna dig into that too. And what they're good for. They're a drop down from architects. And I'm not gonna get into those details now because I wanna talk about interior designers.

Interior designers are the most undervalued design professional in the universe. And I say that 'cause I come from experience. Most of the interior designers that, or most of the designers that I employed, were interior designers. They had degrees in interior design with a focus on architectural interiors.

They were not architects, but what we did, a lot of renovation and remodels and even big remodels and some expansions. They did all the conceptual drawings. They even did some of the construction documents, and then we brought in structural engineers to do some of the other aspects of the construction [00:28:00] documents.

In consultation and I was able to build hundreds and hundreds and maybe a thousand projects doing it that way. And it worked out really well. I operated a design build business model. So we're gonna talk about interior designers in the upcoming episode. So the one thing that you, I want you to keep in mind as we go into this world of design is.

One of the problems that you hear everybody complaining about is scope creep. That's a term scope creep. The scope of working really increased. My budget went over and now I'm pissed off because my contractors change ordering me to death. And I hate myself, I hate everybody, and I want to just blow my house up.

When you start looking at those details. I gotta tell you, there's a big reason why that is, is because the design work to begin with was not done thoroughly enough. The discovery stage was not done thoroughly enough from the owner's perspective, and then therefore, [00:29:00] the architect didn't get everything.

Or the designer, they hired an inferior designer and now all of a sudden they want to do this and they want to do that. And they didn't investigate this, and they didn't investigate that. And this was called scope creep, but. The tables get turned too often towards everybody else, but the homeowner and you, we, you, as the homeowner, do have to take on some responsibility.

But here's the problem. You don't know. You don't know. Like you need to do that, and that's my job is to help you get to know that and why you can control the screwed up situations that could happen. Early on. So scope creep is a crazy one and it's usually because it didn't get specified like it was supposed to.

Communication is a big one and there we're gonna talk about that and the understanding design professionals character profiles that I've created that we're gonna talk about, but we're gonna, the communication back and forth between designers and [00:30:00] customers. And how it's documented and how it's communicated back and forth is really important.

And how it's followed up on is paramount to getting what needs to get on the design in the specifications. And we're gonna dig into that. I. Budget mismanagement. Excuse me. Budget mismanagement has to be the biggest, right? So you've set a budget six months ago when we were going through that fund discovery phase, and now you're deep into the design having a blast.

And oh my God, I love this. This is awesome. This is great. Has anybody asked how much it's gonna cost? Has anybody even brought it up? Nobody brings it up. I'll tell you that right now. Unless it's you who brings it up and you and I would recommend you do, and we're gonna talk about what I call budget checkpoints during the design.

So that's the big one where people get just totally derailed. And end up blowing their project up because everybody got outta control in kind of a good way because the creative [00:31:00] juices are just flowing. And I gotta tell you, there's been many times where that's happened in my business because everybody just jumped on the bandwagon.

And there's been many of those times where people just said, you know what? I love it so much I'm doing it. But there's been times where people got upset or disappointed that after all of that effort. It's just way more than I wanted to spend, and so we didn't run a perfect practice. I'll be totally honest.

We didn't do it intentionally. We just got excited and we had to back. Fortunately, we were able to backtrack and then parse the project out and phase it out or scale things down. But you can see what happened there is it created a lot more work for everybody. And now the customer feels like they are you, the homeowner are feeling like you're, now you're making compromises because they really wanted that.

It's, it can be a little emotional. There's ways to circumvent that and address that early on to try to at least manage that better so that you don't get into a really bad situation. [00:32:00] Also one of the things we'll talk about is timelines, deadlines. Schedules and whatnot. That is. That is the kind of the overlying things about design that goes, that we go into in this upcoming series.

I won't get into some of the other things that we're gonna talk about, such as the consultants, 'cause we're gonna get into that into a level of details. So I just, all I wanna do now is talk about before we we exit out of this. This series or this introduction is what really is coming up in this series.

Exactly. So that, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna, we're gonna talk about understanding design professionals as the next episode. Then we're gonna talk about and that we're gonna focus on that episode. We're gonna focus on architectural and residential designers. Then we're gonna, the next episode we're gonna talk about interior designers, why they're so important, and what do they do.

Then we're gonna talk about the consultants and the [00:33:00] different, all the different ones that may come into play, and we're gonna touch on those so that you have a sense of, you can ask, but do I need a soils engineer, Mr. Or Mrs. Architect? Then you might get an answer like maybe you could, if you wanted to wait, what?

So those are the kind of things that we're gonna talk about now, a big one after. After you get your head around the design, the designers, the people, and the consultants, we're gonna dig into the design process, which is a specific methodology that. A lot of, maybe even most architectural firms and architects take when they do a project and there's a, it's a stepping stone approach.

I'm gonna talk with you about each of those steps, why they're there, what they accomplish, and how you can participate in 'em to maintain control of your project. The other one, we're gonna, so now that you have a sense of the design professionals, you have an understanding of the process, then we're gonna talk about.

[00:34:00] Design agreements. So there's different ways to engage with a design professional. There's different types of contracts and they're usually tailored to the project type, the size and complexity of the project and the client. And the architect. There's different ways that you can pay for your services to an architect, and there's pros and cons almost to all of 'em.

It's just, it's a customizing thing here which is best for you. So that's the idea there. The fun one is next, which is called design limitations. Before you even start your design, you probably have a lot of restrictions that you didn't even know about. Most of them come from your local city, state, and county regulations.

For example, the size of the home, you can put on the lot, the height of the height of the home, the setback requirement, how far you can build to the property lines, and so on. [00:35:00] There's many that I'm gonna touch on each in that specific episode. Parking rules, trees, there's so much that if you know a little bit about that to begin with, and you were saying, oh, I want to put a.

I want to expand all the way to my back fence, or I want to expand within 10 feet of my back fence so I can get a big master suite and whatever. You may not be able to do that, and if you know a little bit about that, you can make sure that you can stay in control because. It's a design professional's job to know it all.

But here's the problem, they don't know it all. And when you go from city to city and then rules change every year it's a full-time job. And that's why a lot of architectural firms have people on staff that are just compliance that try to make sure when a client comes in the door and they share what they want, the first thing they do is they are online, they are in the planner.

Planning and building department office, making sure that things get done. Here's the problem, sometimes that doesn't get done [00:36:00] and designs get created and then voila, you have a set of plans that you can't build. It happens, and I can share some stories about that during that episode. And then we're gonna even move into understanding plans, architectural plans, interior design plans.

I'm gonna educate you on. The basics of how plans are developed, how they're organized, and what's on them. And we will probably move into more audio and YouTube presentation there because I wanna show you some of the things that you'll be able to visualize and, it's, it that can only do so much with podcasting and YouTubing.

And then, if you need help with a specific project or something, then we can talk about. Private consulting services or something to help you with that. So the last one is permits and approvals. So this is all in the book, by the way, and I kinda recommend you. I'm not trying to push the [00:37:00] book on you, but I wrote the book so I could do what I'm doing with you today.

I wanted some kind of framework to go off of, to elaborate on and tell you what, just get right down into it. But reading the book is something you can have by your side all the time, but approvals and permits, so gaining approvals of your project. And that just doesn't mean from your city, but it also could mean from your HOA the state, the county, the city, the process that you have to go through.

And this is a big part of your professional designer's responsibility. Now, if you're gonna try to take that on yourself. You better listen up on that series because there's a lot of places where you can get hung up big time and blow your project up if you are not in tune with the process. So keep in mind that an architect's one of their key responsibilities.

The permit processing. And when we talk about the agreement side of things, you're gonna wanna make [00:38:00] sure that they've included that in their contract so that you can rest assured that's being taken care of. So approvals and permits is a big one that you're gonna want know just enough, be able to ask the right questions.

So in conclusion, the. The world of design is going to go through the interpersonal aspects of design with the people that you need. It's gonna get into the technical aspects such as the plans, and it's going to help you stay in control, to gain control, to ask the right questions, to position you, to meet your expectations.

You have a job too. And we talked about that already, that you have a job, your job is to look out for yourself, but it's not fair because you don't really know what to do yet. And that's the idea. So that is the introduction to the world of design. And then the next [00:39:00] episode, like I said, will be understanding design professionals.

The basis of what we're gonna be talking about and we'll move from there. So again, this is Bill Reed with the Awakened Homeowner. I can see more and more people are listening every day and I love it. And if you have any questions specific that I can address in the podcast, I really want to do that.

So if right now I think the only way you're gonna be able to do that is to email me directly. At WW Reed, REID, at the awaken homeowner.com, I do have a Facebook page the Awaken Homeowner Facebook page that you could join and you can ask questions there. This is, I, the private community isn't a hundred percent set up yet.

As I've told you many times. I'm developing that along with the application that I'm really excited about and that you can go to the Awaken homeowner website and you can. See what I'm up to on that. And you can even join a list [00:40:00] to be one of the early adopters of the Build Quest app for free, where I can get feedback.

I want real life and professionals too, architects, contractors, homeowners that want to test it out for me and tell me what's great and what's not, and what they wish they had. And I'm really excited about that. So if you're really into it, join there and check it out. Otherwise, I will see you on the next episode, over and out.

Thanks.