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O P I N I O N
Now is a good time to take stock of the many positive aspects of our industry to help keep yourself and your employees motivated and directed in the midst of uncertainty. What’s so great about the A/E business?
I have worked my entire professional career in the A/E industry. After completing graduate school, I started in a management consulting and recruiting firm and had A/E firms as clients in 1980. I eventually became an owner in one of my early client companies at age 25 or 26, went on to start my own company (what is today Zweig Group) at 30, and then worked with literally thousands of people and companies in this business over the last 32 years.
Mark Zweig
Over that time, I also started or helped start a number of other businesses including a motorcycle shop, a reading clinic, a baby products company, and a design/build general contracting and development company. I also served on many BODs of A/E firms and was an owner in several of those. I am now in my 16th year of working as a college professor teaching entrepreneurship at The Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. If nothing else, no one can say I lack perspective. This year, at the end of the semester, I wrote a blogpost where I provided my best advice for graduating seniors. One of my key points for them was to find an industry that they enjoy and to get into that. Those who do that will never have to
shift gears and step back. Everything they learn will be useful and build upon the last thing they learned. It got me thinking. What’s so great about the A/E business, and why do I love it so much? I thought I would share my thoughts for you, our readers, to perhaps use when recruiting new graduates who have other choices, as well as to get other newcomers into our industry. Or, to help convince people who are thinking of leaving our business for another one in a different industry that they could be making a mistake. Here are my thoughts on some of the many awesome “pluses” of working in an A/E firm:
See MARK ZWEIG, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER MAY 18, 2020, ISSUE 1345
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