In this business, you don't have to be an architect or an engineer or a brick layer. But you have to understand how the money flows. That you can only understand if you're on the site.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
To be a designer today is to be an entrepreneur. Whether you're a two-man operation in Shoreditch or a 3,000-person, vertically integrated brand, you need to have the wherewithal to run your business through investment, considering everything from start-up funds to your exit plan or what it takes to go public.
I studied to be an architect. And I find tremendous similarities between building a company and the design process. Businesses have to do their planning on the fly in a fashion similar to an architect sketching.
One thing I learn - I've been in practice now for half a century or more, and the most important ingredient for an architect to do a good building is to have a good client. I think a client counts for as much as fifty per cent.
If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.
Architects are not clients. We can't build without something to built.
I know all three facets of the business: the development side, the operations side, and I know how to borrow the money and how to put the deal together. If it was easy, everybody would do it.
You have to be very fast-thinking, creative, and mobile. It is key to making a business move.
There are people who design buildings that are not technically and financially good, and there are those who do. Two categories - simple.
First you learn the value of abstraction, then you learn the cost of abstraction, then you're ready to engineer.
I come from a long line of architects. I'm the only one who did not become an architect, but I've been around the drawing aspect and construction my whole life.
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