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Zweig Group is social and posting every day! C O N N E C T W I T H U S

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TZL: How does marketing contribute to your suc- cess rate? Are you content with your marketing ef- forts, or do you think you should increase/decrease marketing? AR: Marketing is vital to our success. Our marketing team is top-notch. They can build collateral quickly and know how to communicate who we are. It goes back to the story tell- ing. It’s not only important for clients to know who we are, but for employees and potential hires to know, too. You have to market internally and externally. TZL: What has your firm done recently to upgrade its IT system? AR: We are 100 percent Revit. We have a full-time re- search and development guy who follows trends in soft- ware and is constantly on the lookout to improve. We re- cently spent $250,000 on server upgrades and back- up. We’re going to the cloud with more software. Data is so intense. You have to continue to move forward and evolve. “Our culture is why people want to stay. We are flexible with work hours and put a ton of trust in our employees. We’re fun and have things like impromptu happy hours and project-win celebrations. We have a very open culture.” TZL: What’s the key benefit you give to your employees? Flexible schedule, incentive compensation, 401(k), etc.? AR: Our culture is why people want to stay. We are flexi- ble with work hours and put a ton of trust in our employ- ees. We’re fun and have things like impromptu happy hours and project-win celebrations. We have a very open culture. We’re unsurpassed in bonuses. Coming out of the recession we continued to give bonuses to people who delivered – not just senior leadership. Bonuses are typically 10 percent of the employee’s salary.

and I delivered. Entrepreneurship is at the heart of who we are. We reward people who “bring it.” “We’re saying ‘no’ to more projects and weeding out what we don’t really want to do. We’re focused on stabilizing our growth. We want to remain a boutique firm and don’t want to lose that family feel. We’re focused on working with the stars.” TZL: What’s your prediction for 2017 and for the next five years? AR: We’ve grown a lot over the last four years, adding about 20 to 30 people per year. This year, we plan to add about five to 10 new people. Our growth has been questioned at the shareholder level and it’s been recommended that we don’t want to go beyond much more than 130 employees. We’re saying “no” to more projects and weeding out what we don’t really want to do. We’re focused on stabilizing our growth. We want to remain a boutique firm and don’t want to lose that family feel. We’re focused on working with the stars. TZL: What’s the recipe for creating an effective board? AR: Assembling a board that supports growth is impor- tant. Ours does and its extreme focus on our markets has helped us to grow. We have an internal board that is com- prised of 15 shareholders. We vote once per year. I made a motion to maintain the board composition for the next three years. Why? Because we wanted the founders, who are still active at the board level, to know their role would not change. TZL: How do you go about winning work? AR: We are 100 percent network driven. Some partners go through the RFP process, but we also have a small SWAT team that focuses on networking and about 75 percent of our work comes from that. We’ve also had great success with national projects and as those clients grow, they take us with them. TZL: Once you’ve won a contract, what are the “marching orders” for your PMs? AR: We are 90 percent developer oriented. First we assess the plans and studies to see if pro forma and zoning are met. Next, we focus on concept and schematic design and then dive in. Building relationships with the client is of ut- most importance. We build unique structures and work to build unique relationships, too. The whole process is very personal. We build stories around our unique personality and theirs.

gust 28, 2017, ISSUE 1214

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