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O P I N I O N
Know your client’s business Being a great architect or engineer is not enough. To truly flourish, you have to have an intimate knowledge of what makes your clients tick.
Y our knowledge of architecture, design, engineering, and building codes, your relationship with building and planning officials, and even your sterling reputation with the City Council, Planning Commission, and Architecture Review Board, is simply not enough today. To be truly successful and fulfilled in this business, I believe you’ve got to know your clients’ businesses intimately.
Ed Friedrichs
and supervising the construction of a building or an interior. Our knowledge of their business allowed us to operate strategically. We advised them on the utilization of their studio properties, on an array of organizational issues and, of course, on how to opti- mize their real estate value. ❚ ❚ When Sony bought Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. wanted to swap the MGM Studio in Culver City (which they owned), for Columbia’s one-third interest in the Burbank Studio, we worked for both “I encourage you to go deep with your clients, to engage in continuous learning.”
To figure this out, you have to know enough about how that client operates in the markets they serve so that you could go to work for one of them and hold your own. My experience tells me this approach reaps great rewards in satisfied clients, performance-based innovation, reputation enhancement, add-on and repeat business, as well as personal satisfaction. Let me give you some examples: ❚ ❚ In Southern California, my firm worked for many years with numerous major film studios. I became a student of how their businesses ran, both on the creative side as well as in their legal and business affairs, right down to reading the trade papers, Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter , every day. Our work with most of our clients went well beyond designing
See ED FRIEDRICHS, page 11
THE ZWEIG LETTER August 1, 2016, ISSUE 1162
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