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Conference call: David Arends David Arends, president and CEO of CR architecture + design (Hot Firm #19 for 2016), a 175-person firm based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent “E ntrepreneurship is not a standard genetic of architects, so it’s something that has to be nurtured,” Arends says. A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID ARENDS. The Zweig Letter: What’s your philosophy on fee/ billing and accounts receivable? How do you col- lect fees from a difficult client? David Arends: It’s pretty simple. We bill on a 30- day cycle for work completed. All payments are due 30-day net. When a bill goes beyond that, we try to find out why. Late payment is often a client’s way of communicating that there’s something they’re not happy about. In most cases, it’s not that they
don’t have the money, there’s more to it than that. So, first, we try to find out if there’s something on our end that we need to work on and correct. If it’s simply a matter of a repeated delinquency, we then have to assess if we want to work with this client again. Luckily, we don’t have a lot of problems with A/R. “Entrepreneurship is not a standard genetic of architects, so it’s something that has to be nurtured.”
David Arends, President and CEO, CR architecture + design
TZL: What’s the recipe for creating an effective board?
DA: I’m not a big fan of inside boards, but the state
THE ZWEIG LETTER Ju
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