Today I talked to Eric Reinholdt about two excellent books: Architect + Entrepreneur Volume 1: A Field Guide (Design Workshop Press, 2015) and Architect + Entrepreneur Volume 2: A How-To Guide (Design Workshop Press, 2015).

Architect + Entrepreneur: A Field Guide is filled with contemporary, relevant, fresh tips and advice, from a seasoned professional architect building a new business. The guide advocates novel strategies and tools that merge entrepreneurship with the practice of architecture and interior design. The Problem: Embarking on a new business venture is intimidating; you have questions. But many of the resources available to help entrepreneur architects and interior designers start their design business lack timeliness and relevance. Most are geared toward building colossal firms like SOM and Gensler using outdated methods and old business models. If you’re an individual or small team contemplating starting a design business, this is your field guide; crafted to inspire action. The Solution: Using the lean startup methodology to create a minimum viable product, the handbook encourages successive small wins that support a broader vision enabling one to “think big, start small, and learn fast.” It’s a unique take on design practice viewed through the lens of entrepreneurship and is designed to answer the questions all new business owners face, from the rote to the existential.

Architect + Entrepreneur: A How-To Guide challenges the foundations of traditional practice and asks: + In what ways can we hack our craft to serve both our personal lifestyle and our professional goals? + What if design practice capitalized on the architect’s drive to be creative and consumer buying culture in equal measure? + How can we turn our services into products? + How can young professionals compete in today’s marketplace leveraging the power of the Internet? Reinholdt, founder of 30X40 Design Workshop describes in detail how his business model has evolved to leverage passive income producing products and offers a new paradigm for practice. It’s a manual of high-level strategies, field-tested tactics, and case studies showing how architects are reinventing practice in the 21st century.

Bryan Toepfer, AIA, NCARB, CAPM is the Principal Architect for TOEPFER Architecture, PLLC, an Architecture firm specializing in Residential Architecture and Virtual Reality. He has authored two books, “Contractors CANNOT Build Your House,” and “Six Months Now, ARCHITECT for Life.” He is a professor at Alfred State College and the Director of Education for the AIA Rochester Board of Directors. Always eager to help anyone understand the world of Architecture, he can be reached by sending an email to btoepfer@toepferarchitecture.

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