204: ‘How to Future-Proof Your Architecture Practice’, with Dave Gilmore

204: ‘How to Future-Proof Your Architecture Practice’, with Dave Gilmore

Evan Troxel: Welcome to the TRXL Podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, and in this episode I welcome Dave Gilmore. Dave is the president and CEO of DesignIntelligence, where he works closely with leadership teams across the built environment to address the profound and accelerating changes happening within our profession. He's also a writer, speaker and trusted advisor to firm leaders, bringing a no nonsense perspective on transformation, leadership, and strategic clarity.

As I expected when I invited Dave to join me, This this candid conversation is a wake up call. He brings sharp insight and blunt truth about where the AEC industry is falling short and what needs to happen next, just as I knew he would. Whether it's outdated business models, fragile leadership, or the misplaced belief that technology alone will save us, Dave doesn't hold back. He challenges us to get uncomfortable, to lean into curiosity, and to reclaim agency over the future. In this episode, we explore the topics of: why firms must disrupt themselves before they get disrupted; the crisis of leadership in the AEC industry; how technology is not the disruptor, the lack of preparation is; the danger of viewing innovation as a department rather than a mindset; the factory model of production and how it limits architectural practice; why digital transformation is a leadership issue, not a technology one; the consequences of outsourcing your thinking to consultants and vendors, how psychological safety and trust drive meaningful change; why architects must embrace entrepreneurial thinking; the importance of curiosity and emotional intelligence in leadership; and as usual, there's an extensive amount of additional information in the show notes, so please be sure to check that out. You can find them directly in your podcast app if you're a supporting member of TRXL+, and if you're a free member, you can find them over on the website, which is TRXL.co.

Lastly, you can really help me out here on the podcast by sharing these episodes with your colleagues and by commenting and sharing on my LinkedIn posts about them. You can also leave a comment over on YouTube and engage with me and the other listeners there. I came away from this conversation inspired, and I think you will too.

So now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Dave Gilmore. Dave Gilmore, welcome to the podcast. It's, it's been a while since we've seen each other.

Dave Gilmore: It has, but what an exciting thing been watching your programming over the last few years and you've just, you took an idea,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: you nurtured it, you build a plan around it and voila, look at you. You're just all over the place. It's, it is. It's been really extraordinary.

Evan Troxel: thank you very much. It's the five year long overnight success. Uh, right. So celebrated five years. Just hit 200 episodes. Uh, I, I swear after 10 episodes, I thought, I'm done. Who else can I interview? And, and, and now, here you are. So I had to, I had to pay my dues before I invited Dave Gilmore

Dave Gilmore: Well, thank you so much. Yeah, thanks. People are gonna think it's the guy from Pink Floyd, but it's not.

Evan Troxel: Right. Uh, I love Pink Floyd. All right. All right. So I, I wanted to talk strategy for architects, but before we talk about strategy, I have some, I have some burning questions that were prompted by another guest on the show that I think will be really fun to have a candid conversation around the current state of the AEC industry and maybe the future of it. Before we do that, can you just give a quick overview of, of what you've been up since I've seen you maybe in the last five years. What, where, what have you been

Dave Gilmore: Yeah, coming out of the pandemic, of course, uh, DesignIntelligence, the Design Futures Council was disrupted like everyone else though. Uh, it was interesting. Uh, in 2020, um, I remember getting home, uh, from London the day before the big boom happened here. It was already happening in London.

There had already been some folks from the east come in to London and there was reports of this thing happening, and it was all, oh. So I was thinking, whew, I gotta get out here and go to the United States. Right. Welcome, welcome to the idea of pandemic. Right? And so got back and within a few weeks, of course the world was unraveling and we were seeing things.

Um, we had a, a very interesting experience because in the months following April, everybody thought it kinda lifted in the summer, and then we got another wave of it, and then they thought it was over, and then we entered 21 and we got another wave of it, you know. So in the 12 months from April all the way to the following March, we ended up having these kind of Zoom conversations with 400 different firms.

The phone was ringing off the hook, I'd get on these things. It was, it was, uh, honestly, a labor of love because people were just like, what do we do? We don't even know what to do. We don't even know how to think about

Evan Troxel: how

Dave Gilmore: ourselves.

Evan Troxel: hear the word uncertainty? During? During those

Dave Gilmore: Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah,

Evan Troxel: Yes.

Dave Gilmore: it is. And, and unprecedented, right? Unprecedented and uncertainty.

It was everywhere. And so we had, uh, we had quite a labor of love spending time with lots of executives and folks talking about, not the moment, but what are you, how are you going to use this downtime to reemerge? And in reality, most did not. They just kept with the same old, same old and hoped that somehow they would come out.

But others really used this event as a pivot to pivot in their culture, how they thought about business, how they thought about what their priorities and what was most important to them was an extraordinary. And there's a, a clear dichotomy between those two genre of firms that we saw emerge. And of course, here we are.

Uh, five, little bit over five years later. And you can clearly see that what has happened in the industry. You see folks who were here and are now here in size, impact, quality, technology, adoption, et cetera. And then you can still see even some very storied firms to do, to do, to du just, just kind of make it along.

They haven't made those leaps and I'm not talking about business success only, I'm talking about societal impact, clarity around their own culture inside their firms, uh, multiple variables that that, uh, that we watch in assess in firms. So, yeah, it's been an exciting last five years. Uh, at DesignIntelligence, we have the opportunity to speak into a lot of firms.

We, you know, we have this advisory business that we do and we take limited client engagements 'cause. Um, I, you, you can edit this out if you want to, but if somebody wants to do a quick and dirty strategy, we say, go C-P-S-M-J. If you want, if you want to do authentic transformation, you're rethinking your business and maybe even what it is you're gonna bring to market and how you're gonna change, then we'd love to spend that time with you.

And so we have been unbelievably busy for these last several years, and right now I think, um, uh, Laura from my staff and I were just talking about that this week. I think we're involved in nine advisory engagements simultaneously right now, and that they're not Zoom calls. These are, you know, on the ground spending time with principals and partners and leaders within firms.

So it's, it's been very, very busy. And then of course. We've been the, uh, initiators and sponsors of the Design Futures Council for 33 years, and the council is, is doing very well. We have a lot of participation and so lots of, lots of things happening and on and on and on it goes. But, uh, there is no end to the disruption that's hit this industry.

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Dave Gilmore: it's moved, I believe, from disruption to destruction. Not all bad, but that's where we really are. Yeah,

Evan Troxel: Burn it down and start over. I, I,

Dave Gilmore: kind of

Evan Troxel: what, what you mean by that. So, so when you say destruction, I, I, I agree. It's not all bad and I think things do have to come to a point for a new idea to actually emerge because we get straddled to those old ideas and it's really hard to let go, and then they are the boat anchor that holds you in those places.

Right. So, I'm just curious, you know, what do you, what do you mean when you

Dave Gilmore: perfect.

Evan Troxel: not all bad and, and that you are seeing disruption turn into destruction?

Dave Gilmore: So if I zoom out from AEC into the broader world, of course we have a new, uh, a new, uh, executive administration in the United States government at this point. Uh, you would think that it had been going for four or five years at this point, but it's only been a few months. It's extraordinary the amount of change that's occurred.

Uh, almost all of it is disruptive without a question yet. Uh, much of it has moved to destructive,

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Dave Gilmore: and we are, the, the jury is still out as to whether that is legitimate destruction towards some recreated positive outcome that has sustainability to it, a sustained value, or whether it is destruction for destruction's sake.

And we still don't know yet at this point. I'm, I was saying to an audience earlier in the year, we, we publish a thing on a webcast like this. Uh, called the, the DesignIntelligence Foresight Report each year. And it's a, a broadcast we do, and it's our look into the, the economics, the market of multiple markets around the world, as well as the, the vertical, uh, services that the, that the industry provides.

And I, and, and I was asked a question with Dave, what is your prediction of those? And I said, we don't predict, uh, any fool can predict, and particularly in this new administration, make a prediction. And they'll, they'll go the exact opposite to prove your dis you know, your prediction wrong.

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Dave Gilmore: So we're not in the prediction business.

We're in the economics business, which is different 'cause we really look at the long-term intermediate trends that kind of tell us where the future is going. I don't believe the future is unknown. I think it is uncertain, and that's a difference between the two. And so when we're looking at destruction.

At this point we're talking about, of course, the trade and tariffs dynamic has been highly destructive. Uh, it's been disruptive, but destructive in the form of relationships. Um, I don't believe over the next 20 years that many of the relationships that we have damaged or severed will be restored. I think that trust is, trust is fundamentally at question at this point,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: and that changes so many dimensions of things That comes right down into our industry and how we think about things.

We are currently in our advisory business. We are supporting one of the sovereign wealth funds in the world, uh, with our advice and, and, and the work that we do. And this is, uh, this is one of the funds that's, let's just say, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars knocking on a trillion dollars in assets.

And there's been a, yeah. Yeah. And they have, CL very clearly begun the pivot away from the west, more toward the east,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: and, and that was not in play a year ago.

Evan Troxel: Mm.

Dave Gilmore: So they have made those changes. And I, I say that because it's not pure economics, it comes down to relational trust so often.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: And so I'm giving you some examples of disruption versus destruction and what that means.

Yeah.

Evan Troxel: So in the face of destruction, I mean, are you agree or disagree? Let me know what you think. Like architects are usually kind of, oh, well, let's wait and see. just put it AEC. Let's wait and see. Let's see what happens. Let's see how this plays out. And I mean, that, that could be its own, you know, damning kind of, uh, strategy, right?

It just waiting around to see, because like you said, like this is just, is the next step. This is the next step. Like we had the pandemic, then we, we have all these existential crises, right? We've got ai, we've got economics, we've got all these different things and, and wait and see. a strategy, it is a choice to make. And we've seen that the way that that's played out time and time again in the industry. And I guess maybe you could say that it has been successful for some people to not like ride a wave that literally crashes and burns.

Dave Gilmore: Correct.

Evan Troxel: at the

Dave Gilmore: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: time, there's a lot of different things going on in parallel motion and, and you gotta pick and choose as well as come up with a strategy to move or to wait. I'm, I'm just curious, what, what do firms when, when they see the destruction happening? I mean, obviously there's kind of a paralyzing fear for a lot of them. Like, oh

Dave Gilmore: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: what do we do? Let's just keep doing what we're doing. We hear that time and time again, right?

Dave Gilmore: I spoke at the World Architecture Festival as one of their keynotes last year in Singapore where they were holding it. They'll be in, they'll be in, um, Miami this year. And I'm speaking, I've been invited to speak there too. So I'm like, really? Um, they brought me back. I guess I did okay.

Evan Troxel: Must have been good.

Dave Gilmore: Yeah, I don't know that or controversial.

Um, but in the context of that, I was talking about that the, the definition of disruption, most people don't understand it. It, the word is two words, dis petty. And it means to break apart. To break apart. That's what disruption means. It doesn't mean to, to kerfuffle things or ruffle the water or, or rearrange the furniture.

It means to literally break apart. There's a destructive element to dis to disruption in, uh, indeed. Right. And I think it's always important for us to intentionally disrupt ourselves.

Evan Troxel: So that

Dave Gilmore: a period.

Evan Troxel: do it

Dave Gilmore: Yes. Yeah. It's important for us to disrupt ourselves. Even if after breaking things apart and exploring and, uh, examining different combinations, we bring it back together the same way as it was before we broke it apart.

But, but we are so fearful of the possible ramifications, much less implications of what that breaking apart will do. That we just maintain status. We're kind of frozen in status and most of it is fear driven. The fear of of can I get it back together if I'm wrong, kind of thing.

Evan Troxel: The

Dave Gilmore: So,

Evan Troxel: right?

Dave Gilmore: so what I see mostly in the architectural, and of course we're talking in generalities 'cause I could give you, uh, a list of firms that we see as positive disruptors, reinventing, reimagining the future of design.

It's what I call design beyond buildings, using their abilities to do extraordinary things way beyond the traditional, you know, uh, S-D-D-D-C-D-C-A process that's gone out there today. But in general, we're gonna speak in the general, the deal use a very broad paintbrush. The architectural out of the A and the E and the C are most inclined towards either head in the sand.

I, this isn't really happening, is this too shall pass? Let's just keep going or wait and see and wait and see. Always results in you becoming a me too,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: oh, okay. I guess it's okay now, so I'll, I'll go from there. Because architects are not in generally are not taught to be business people, and therefore to think about the logical progression.

Of economics that leads to finance, that leads to the spending, that leads to the investments, et cetera, et cetera. And therefore to make predictive analysis from those investments, we're just not, it's just not the way it is. I, I made a, a statement recently and a, a group of, a very large group of architects and I got these unbelievable jeers that looking back at me, um, and, and it did, and it was just simply that architects are, are not inclined, uh, to think, uh, futuristically.

And they were thinking, well, we do future design all the time. That's design is this unusual static thing. At the end of the day, you, you design, you hand your models over and somebody else bastardizes it and turns it into what they wanted it to be turned to Right. You, you lose, you lose control.

Immediately. And the question that I was po posing the audience is, is that where you want to hang your hat? Is that, is that where you wanna put all your life, right, or do you wanna be, do you wanna move up the scale in a different way?

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Yep.

Dave Gilmore: So architecture, are they, they're, they're, I think they're more struggling now than they, than they ever have.

Um, the, because I remember in 2018 at a Design Futures Council event, I posited that we must disrupt ourselves or be disrupted from external. Places. I said it again in 19, I said it in 20 on a podcast, on a, on a, a webcast. I said, over and over and over again. And lo and behold, what has showed up, we have ai, AI is, is this extraordinary technology.

I'm not afraid of ai. It's, it's, it is what it is. Uh, I believe that, that the ideal expression of AI is an interdependent relationship where it teaches us and we teach it. And there's this beautiful, it doesn't have to be this overlord

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: kind of thing that the, that, uh, the dark folks like to talk about.

It's gonna be an overlord, they're gonna dominate us, kind of thing. I think it's a, it's an exchange. But in all of that, we have been primarily disrupted from the outside and completely new ideas about what design is for in the first place are now being brought forward. And we're realizing that we're confronted authentically with an existential.

Period. Right now our predictions about AI and its disruptive effect is there's this initial kind of wave we're in because of the impatience of modern humans. Enthusiasm will be lost and wane around ai, but deep investment will continue and suddenly it will all emerge again

Evan Troxel: Right.

Dave Gilmore: will be the next massive leap.

And when that occurs, all the, all the pauses will be left in the dust. That's just what's gonna happen. It's just, you know, you can look at it in history. These are the, the, the patterns. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: It's like the Gartner hype cycle, right? You, you, you get to that trough of disillusionment section of the hype cycle and okay, we don't have to think about that anymore. Meanwhile, it is silently or just quietly plotting along with, like you said, a lot of investment, uh, and a lot of innovation going on to really prove, like, once we've kind of gone through the throwing the spaghetti at the wall, now let's refine and iterate, right?

And then it, there will be things that emerge that if, if you don't keep your eye on them and practice those things as, as they reemerge you're gonna be left holding nothing.

Dave Gilmore: Yeah, you're, you're exactly right. And, and we think that the architect has the opportunity, the wonderful part about AI is you don't have to be a multi-thousand people organization to deploy AI into your day to day. So it's, it's level setting the world in an interesting way.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Dave Gilmore: Of course, you know, there's a, there's a few firms that have in incorporated AI into their mainstreams.

And at this point are operating with human oversight on AI production. And it's extraordinary what's already been achieved. 40 plus percent profit margins moving up into the fifties and the sixties, beating the top 10 architectural firms in the United States with 30 people instead of thousands of people on multiple, uh, uh, multiple projects to win.

I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a completely new world that's being imagined, uh, and we are pretty excited about it, and we think that the results will be tremendous. I, I remember, um, two years ago at, at our Design Futures Council event in La Jolla, we had Dr. Ed Feigenbaum with us, and Ed is one of the, he is the last of the original 14.

Thinkers, American thinkers in the fifties who brought what we call artificial intelligence to the United States. He was working with Herb Simon and Alan Newell and, and that's when they published the first article, I think it was 55, and it mentioned this thing called artificial intelligence. The, it's the first sighting of it in publication.

The idea of artificial intelligence. And so Ed was with us and he, we celebrated his 88th birthday. He was a graduate student at the time. Back then, he went on to found the computer science labs. At Stanford, become the chief scientist for the United States Air Force in the, in the, uh, cold Wars, uh, particularly in the seventies, the very heated part of it.

Extraordinary guy. And I said to him, ed, what do you think the future of this AI thing is? What do you think is really gonna happen? He says, you know, Dave, I I thank you for celebrating my birthday. My family lives till over there, a hundred. It's just on both sides of the family. It's wherever. So I, I'm guessing I'm gonna make it to like 1 0 2 or something like that.

Had a big smile on his face. And he goes, in the next 10 years, the cure to cancer will occur. And I said, oh, yeah, you think so? I'm, I'm trying to be polite. Like, yeah, whatever. And I said, no, you really believe that? And he goes, oh, with the certainty.

Evan Troxel: Hmm,

Dave Gilmore: makes you so certain? He said, it's not an opinion.

He said, now with the emergence of quantum computing

Evan Troxel: Hmm,

Dave Gilmore: AI operating on quantum, we will finally find the needle in the haystack. He said, the cure to cancer is already there. We just don't know how to t traw the data appropriately and now we're going to be able to do it. And he just had this, this confidence smile in his face and I thought, holy sha moly, this is one of the guys that started this thing and he's speaking with such confidence.

There was no hope in there. He is a scientist.

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Dave Gilmore: He is. He literally believes that, and, and it makes me wonder if someone of that consequence is speaking so clearly and with confidence around this, what can the design community learn from that and how might it best deploy ai not to just get stuff done faster, better, cheaper?

But to transform the design industry

Evan Troxel: Right.

Dave Gilmore: to take its leadership role once again. That it lost many years ago.

Evan Troxel: To rethink. Yeah. And that, that's a, a really great point and something that I, I was probably at one of those design inte, the La Jolla event, sorry, I, you,

Dave Gilmore: yeah, yeah.

Evan Troxel: you have DesignIntelligence Designing Futures Council. You've got these, there's a lot of design and there's a lot of future thinking.

But I think one of those events, you know, it was like, let's rethink what the, the business model could be because you act. asked such provocative questions a lot of great thinking happens in those and brainstorming because you've got some like purposed individuals in those, around those tables, right?

They're driving at where are we going and how do we get there? And then you take that stuff back to a leadership team that's like, yeah, yeah, let's wait and see. Right? And so there's a lot of this kind of, you know, you, you hit these brick walls inside the organizations and you said it perfectly a minute ago when you said like, there's a lot, they become the me toos.

Right? I

Dave Gilmore: Yep.

Evan Troxel: it was you years ago who, and this has stuck with me, is like. do you want to be on some great, you know, ENR list or BD and c list of top 500 firms? What, you're 168 out of 500? Right? No, you need to be top three or top five, like if you really want. And, and that requires this rethinking so that you can reinvent

Dave Gilmore: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: from the ashes if you've been around for a while. Um, as, as the next version of yourself. And, and I'm curious what, you're seeing people do in those regards to actually push the frontier of design to another level beyond the traditional three-phase services approach.

Dave Gilmore: So that's a, it's a wonderful question. Um, you know, we look at firms, you know, those lists that you just mentioned, they're all around revenue,

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Dave Gilmore: right? Yet, by the way, none of it's audited. It's what I report. So I could be lying up my kazoo and I get a number, right? So it's not audited. You don't have to submit financial reports to get on that list.

I always, always get a kick outta this. But on the other side, uh, we look at. Firms, what is, it's, it's your impact and your long-term value to society, to the industry, et cetera, that we're to the environment that we should be saying, this is the number one, number two, number three firm in the world, not revenue as a fleeting moment.

It has, it changes every year up or down the end of the day. So I think our, our indices for greatness is wrong. We tried to, we try to take us economic, GDP and other growth factors and apply it to this cottage industry, which is called a architecture, which, what are their, um, 22,000 architecture firms in the United States or something like that.

It's a cottage industry. I think the last number I saw, the average architecture firm is 3.5 people. Right.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: So it's, it's like, it doesn't even apply. It's what is I, I look at a firm like Morphos. Who has been consistently innovating, experi, uh, experimenting, applying learning, uh, Kieran Timberlake. It's all about learning.

Every project is about learning. What will you learn on this project? It's a lab. It's a research lab for all intensive and purposes. It's not a cookie cutter. I can tell you that many of the large firms I can pull into a skyline and see buildings go, oh, that's so and so, that's so and so, that's so and so because of the same rectangular boxes with a twist.

At the end of the day, it's not innovation. What, what changes the world is invention and innovation. That's where we get to, and that's why I believe AI is going to ex give us this unbelievable opportunity to level set the floor and let the smallest firm be the most innovative. We're very intrigued. For instance, with a firm that operates out of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The founders are both, uh. Fellows that came out of the MIT media labs. I don't know if you know these guys. So-so

Evan Troxel: I have not heard of that.

Dave Gilmore: Oh, it, well, they're just so-so, you know, I'm just kidding. But I just think they're wonder, they're just wonderful. I think they're under 20 people. It is unbelievable the thinking that they have as architects

Evan Troxel: Mm.

Dave Gilmore: about the power of design and how they're leveraging technology and collaboration and client awareness into their work.

It is, and we're talking 20 people and I'd put 'em toe to toe with any of the top 20 firms in the world.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: And so great greatness is being level set in a new way by, I think AI is, is going to, is going to really exacerbate that. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: It, it's interesting to think about the word innovation, which you just used, right? And, and thinking about it, it does, does it always need to involve technology? Because I think we're talking about a multi-layered, kind of a multi-dimensional way of thinking.

Dave Gilmore: Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. So we've defined, and I I set this definition out a few years ago at, at a Design Futures council event. 'cause we use words and we don't know what they mean honestly. Uh, what is innovation? Innovation is taking existing assets in a new set of combinations or factorials to re to yield a new outcome or result existing assets in a new combination to result in new, new things right.

Kind of thing. While invention is taken, it's nothing to something it's taking, there, there are no existing assets. You're, you're, you're inventing, you're starting something completely new.

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Dave Gilmore: And the reality is, is almost everything we see is innovation, not invention. Very few authentic inventions have been, uh, brought forward.

And, and, uh, even in pharmaceuticals, uh, most of it is innovating on different, um, uh, assays. Uh, um, um, what do, what do we say? Key pharmaceutical ingredients in different combinations to create different results, right? Kind of thing

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: that very, very little is in conventional, but the, the world is wide open for more innovation to occur in, uh, in architecture and through architecture,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: at least through the thinking of architecture may not architecture itself, but how we think.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

I, I think about kind of previous experiences that I've had and, and leadership and vision. Or lack thereof. I mean, you, you, you mentioned, you know, one, the, one of the inventors of ai basically having a vision where AI is going to take us, right? With,

Dave Gilmore: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: example around cancer. And that often lacking in AEC companies with leadership, right?

It be, and and I say, right? Like, like it's common. You could tell me probably better than, than, than my leading question here, right? But it, I, I, I see a lack of vision a lot of times, especially when it's, well, let's wait and see, like, that, that to me is just, there's no vision of, of who we could be. And so I guess the question is, uh, you know, a lot of firms don't know who they want to be or aren't happy with who they are, but don't know where to go with that. And I'm just curious kind of what that stirs up for you when you, you have this great experience across the industry throughout many firms, and you see, I'm sure levels of. Of vision and kind of, I, I guess I'd like to focus on the high vision people who have this pursuit that they're after and they will stop at nothing to achieve it. What do you see is kind of the differentiator for people who think like that versus the, the me toos of our industry,

Dave Gilmore: Ah, so thank you. What a great tf And, and, and for our listening audience, we had no prep. I just showed up. He didn't send me any questions. He didn't tell me anything. So this is great. This is just wonderful. Anyway, so I believe that the, the difference between having a grand vision, an idea that could be, wow, that really is cool to actually changing the world, to catalyzing authentic change is investment.

And so this is the problem in, in American architecture. I'm just gonna speak to the American side. We do, you know, we're in the uk, we're in Europe, we're Asia, but, but American architecture is, is very focused on the capitalistic idea of billable hours. And so you come up with this bottoms up approach, it costs me this much for Evan, and then I've gotta put this, this overlay on top and put this break even multiplier calculation.

And so it's really Evan times two and a half or three, whatever your number is, right?

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Dave Gilmore: And we try to achieve that and call that professional services. Very interesting, isn't it? But the, the reality is, is most firms do not invest most firms

Evan Troxel: like r and v, r and D in firms in the us?

Dave Gilmore: authentically. What is that number formally, not this informal. You know, there's so many skunk work projects, people, uh uh, we've done a lot of work in technology in these companies and one of the first things we asked to kind of level set is what is your total cost of ownership of technology within the firm?

Kinda get a funny, interesting look and I said, what subscriptions. And do you have in place? And even the CIOs and other, they're like, uh, you know, that's a really good question.

Evan Troxel: don't want

Dave Gilmore: to find, I don't wanna know because every Tom Dick Andary out there goes on the net and gets their own deal and puts it on the corporate credit card.

And it's such a small number, doesn't get caught in finance. And boom, we have this giant cost of ownership going on. Uh, just this, this leak factor I call it. But the reality is, is we're not really making formal, intentional investments towards transforming our firm, our practice, our industry. Uh, I remember a few years ago, I wish you would've been there 'cause you could've helped me, but I presented to the large firm round table of, of CIOs and a whole bunch of other folks, a proposition.

And uh, I said, why don't we all throw some money in a kitty? We'll create a little company, create a little LLC.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: And everyone will own exactly the same amount. You all get one share. Nobody is a dominant player here. Nobody can even buy a second share. Even if they had money to do it. We're all gonna put a little money in the kitty.

And when we do that, we are then going to have a governance around that. And we're gonna make a decision on what are the three things we want to research, invest in and tackle, whatever they're gonna be. We're gonna do this together kind of thing. Right? And it was a goat rodeo trying to get there. We didn't do it.

And then a couple of years ago, they got together and they threw some money in a kitty, and I'm still waiting. It's been a few years. I'm still waiting for something right to come out of it. It's because we're not trained in the world of investment and finance and risk in this industry. And it's what's missing.

We are missing a fundamental. Way of thinking about investment and, and when investment is married to vision, extraordinary things come out of it.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. I think about what you just said and I think, you know, what, what's the risk of investing versus what is the risk of not investing? Right? Tho those are, those are two different things to weigh and, and I think a lot of times people have done these pilot programs in their firms with human capital, right?

Hours, FTEs, whatever you

Dave Gilmore: Yeah,

Evan Troxel: it,

Dave Gilmore: yeah.

Evan Troxel: they failed because I think, you know, I think Nathan Miller was recently on the podcast, he said upwards of 90% of of initiatives in the digital side of technology side of things fail because,

Dave Gilmore: Absolutely. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: That's how it goes. And so they see that failure as a loss of investment.

Right. Um, it wasn't a big investment. It was some time, and it was probably some people on nights and weekends trying to do something

Dave Gilmore: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: and everybody else looking from the side saying, oh yeah, let's see if this goes anywhere. Right. And

Dave Gilmore: Yeah, yeah,

Evan Troxel: jumping in and rolling up their sleeves and, and helping and getting their ha hands dirty.

Right.

Dave Gilmore: yeah. That's right.

Evan Troxel: we see that over and over again. I, I love this idea of a goat rodeo rodeo. I

Dave Gilmore: just unbelievable.

Evan Troxel: I

Dave Gilmore: But you know, it really is, there's there so many problems that could be solved if architects would put their design thinking and some money together and do it. Just do it. It's not about giant software development programs. It's about logic applied at the end of the day and, and, and we're just not committed to it, but others, and that's what I've said.

If you're committed to, it will self disrupt. If we don't self disrupt, we'll be disrupted by others. And that's happened.

Evan Troxel: It, it, it, it's very interesting to think about, uh, because the lack of investment is literally killing. I mean, if you're, if you're not growing, if you're not going somewhere, you are dying. Right. Or you're, you're just barely, you're, you're on life support at

Dave Gilmore: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: trying to keep things going. Uh, very interesting.

Well, I I, I have this, um, this burning question

Dave Gilmore: Uh oh.

Evan Troxel: play a game with you. Uh, I, I want to, I want to, you're, you're a, you're a bank, Dave,

Dave Gilmore: Okay.

Evan Troxel: and if an architect came to you, if an a new firm came to you, I mean, I guess it doesn't need to be a new firm. It could be an existing firm that wants, quotes to reinvent themselves. Could they put a business plan together that would have a vision for the future? And I, I just kind of want, like, I want to treat this like an architectural crit. I want to treat this like a, what's, what's the word? It's like a ruthless review of the industry. And, and 'cause like we don't need to worry about hurting anybody's feelings 'cause we're not gonna name any names here.

I mean is, you've already talked about this kind of lack of business sensibility, economic sensibility when it comes to firms. And I know that, that, that is a generalization as you put it earlier. But, but could they put a vis a business plan together? And, and I think what we wanna weave into this conversation is, you know, you mentioned it earlier, the value of this practice.

Where is it, where is the magic in the practice of architecture? And, and, and I, I just, probably not the financial side, but, but we have to use that to get there. Right? So we

Dave Gilmore: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: that successfully to get there. Could, somebody pull that off today? Are, are you seeing any examples of that happening?

Dave Gilmore: Yes. I, I think the most, the most obvious example to me, and if you don't know these guys, you really need to, it's the folks at Cove Architects.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. They've been on the show recently to talk about the

Dave Gilmore: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: practice.

Dave Gilmore: So probably, uh, Patrick. Right.

Evan Troxel: It was

Dave Gilmore: And, and these, you know, here it is. They've come together. The first thing they said is, we know that we don't know.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: And so it's a, it's an interesting statement at if the DesignIntelligence leadership program that we teach into firms, the statement we make is the first rung on the ascension to authentic leadership is knowing you don't know and saying so to others, you gotta get to that place.

And so they did that. They said, we don't know, but here's what we wanna do. And they were able to put a plan together, like you said, and to attract funding to be able to help underwrite their experimentation of AI within professional practice. And they've been able to do that, and that's resulting in some pretty cool things.

I think I'm, I'm very proud of what they've been able to do and, and it's a model that requires, first of all. Uh, authentic humility to say, I don't know. I know what I know, but I don't know these things. Uh, a vulnerability.

Evan Troxel: quote, right? The known

Dave Gilmore: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: the

Dave Gilmore: The nons unknown,

Evan Troxel: right?

Dave Gilmore: absolutely, but you have to say it out loud. I, I don't know.

You know, and I'm asking for help. And then you have to apply all the wicked intelligence that you have to yielding authentic, uh, how shall I say, measurable, uh, output that is advancing an agenda, not just going round and round around the same agenda, advancing the agenda. Towards transformative outcomes.

And and that's what it, that's what it takes. I think in any firm that is applying their design thinking in new ways will always yield a new business plan, a new business idea. I would love every firm to honestly be an incubator. They've been,

Evan Troxel: that word. Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: they've been taught how to think,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: been taught how to design and create,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: but we're not doing it.

Evan Troxel: yeah, we

Dave Gilmore: And yet,

Evan Troxel: it back to ourselves. We

Dave Gilmore: nope.

Evan Troxel: project and every client out there. And of architecture is a design problem. It literally is, right.

Dave Gilmore: It

Evan Troxel: we, but we

Dave Gilmore: absolutely.

Evan Troxel: as a known, known. we continue to just say, this is the machine. We're gonna keep it running for as long as possible. And what we're talking about is there is a different version that gets us somewhere else with more value, with a bigger impact on the communities that we serve. we treat our practice like a design problem? Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: we've been, uh, encouraging, uh, through our advisory work, um, an MEP firm, a national MEP firm, uh, of consequence. We think, uh, over this last year, um, it is generally stated known that in the 50 year lifecycle of a building, uh, of the total cost of that 50 years, 10% is designed in construction, 90% is operate, manage, and maintain.

The architects of that 10% get this tiny little sliver of that 10%, right? At the end of the day, the engineers get also a tiny little schmuck, and if you're an MEP engineer, you even get a tiny little, little thing, right? Majority of it goes to construction and building product, manufacturing, end of the. And so we have said, why.

Why do we turn over these unbelievably beautiful designs? They get built and we get our check and run for the door.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Next, next

Dave Gilmore: well, yeah. Why don't we knock the wall down between the 10 and the 90, and not designed to build, but designed to operate. The design to operate model would change fundamental design. Most of the time

Evan Troxel: Sure.

Dave Gilmore: it would make us, I gotta eat this dog food.

I'm gonna be really careful about what I put in the dog food kind of thing. And if we did that, then we changed the economics of design from project revenue to recurring revenue.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: And the valuation of your company goes through the roof. On recurring revenue. We're talking about the fundamental changes that are opportunist, opportunistically available right now to the design industry to reinvent the entire industry and the economics of it, which is makes it really compelling.

If I'm a student and I want to go to architecture school, but it's like, yeah, and a bunch of lame architects, no, suddenly I'm an architect. I can come out and I can own the 50 years, not the 18 months

Evan Troxel: right.

Dave Gilmore: on the front end. Do you see where I'm going with this? Right? So it's completely rethinking industry. It's like the guys that did Uber, right, standing on the corner, sweating, wondering when the car's coming, finally shows up.

I finally get one. I finally get one. I get in. It stinks. The guy doesn't speak my language. There's this plastic in front of me. I don't know where he is going. I don't know when I'm gonna get there. And he goes, wait a minute. Why am I doing this? Why don't we change the, the whole paradigm and I'm in charge as the passenger.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: they did it flipped it upside down

Evan Troxel: And what made that possible was this new device that has not been out for, well, it, it's, but that happened, right? And, and that enabled a new way to

Dave Gilmore: of thinking. That's right.

Evan Troxel: right?

Dave Gilmore: here we are with active AI as the new device, the new technology that's available. What are architects doing to exploit that in a positive way towards transformative reinvention outcomes for not only themselves, first of all, for yourself to thy own self. Be true. Fix yourself.

And you'll be much better addressing the markets and what are we doing with that as opposed to, oh, it's really cool, I'm gonna use midjourney and now see 1700 iterations of this building really?

Evan Troxel: Right.

Dave Gilmore: That's not the point.

Evan Troxel: the

Dave Gilmore: Right?

Evan Troxel: thing you could do with it.

Dave Gilmore: It's the worst thing you could do with it is just

Evan Troxel: everybody has access to. Everybody in the whole world could, could

Dave Gilmore: so think differently. Think differently.

Architects, engineers, uh, the design community has, they've been given a gift, but most are frozen in the fear of wait and see.

Evan Troxel: yeah. I.

You, you brought up this idea of a different business model. I had a, I had a, a conversation about exactly that. It had to be in the first 10 episodes of this podcast with an architect from Indiana, Donna Sink, where we talked about that kind of idea of turning a transaction into a relationship. We, we feel like the design process is a relationship building

Dave Gilmore: be

Evan Troxel: then referrals,

Dave Gilmore: I

Evan Troxel: of course it is.

And then like you said, we, we, we get that last check, the keys go to the, the owner and we run for the hills because we've got more projects in the pipeline, et

Dave Gilmore: we're afraid to get sued, so I wanna put distance between us. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: And then it becomes a reactive kind of, uh, engagement. It's like, oh, something went wrong. Right. Uh, okay, so talk to the contractor.

Please, please point. Look, I'm gonna look, look the other direction. And, and the idea of becoming proactive about building operations, building maintenance, tweaking, tweaking the prototype to become an even better fit for the client so that they have. Even an even better organization with this new tool that they have over the long haul. And, and I think that there's, there's subscription models, like you said, recurring revenue, turning a a very one and done project into recurring revenue. I think it's a fantastic idea and that's just one idea that as possibility in our industry to completely change how we approach where the value lies in what we do.

Dave Gilmore: Mm-hmm. I, I, I talking about that, knocking the wall down between the 10 and the 90%, these buildings with all this unbelievable design intent invested into it.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: Are passed over to the CBREs and the JLLs and the yada yadas on this, the alphabet soup. Right? And at the end of the day, they have no idea. They have no clue what the design intent was.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Dave Gilmore: handed over to these folks who charge an charge, the owners unbelievable amount of money, right? And they,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: and then they jam in a building automation system and say, okay, it's all set up. Push the button and we'll get any problems that come out over time. But what would happen if the MEP engineers, which is mostly what BAS is for, is if the, if the engineers that designed it, operated it with intelligence to be proactively in front of everything because they know the life cycle of pieces and parts.

They're sensitively aware of humidity and volume and, and temperature. And I could go on and on and on. They, they get that stuff. Do you think that the building owner might be better served? Do you think that the building owner, the folks that designed it for that owner assigned it for longevity and for, uh, optimization, do you think that they might benefit by having the, the designer be the operator?

I, I don't know. I kind of think so.

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Dave Gilmore: I kind of think so.

Evan Troxel: like

Dave Gilmore: And,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: and it just, and it changes the economics for the design industry, which would make design even that more attractive because we're seeing a, a downturn in the number of students running into the design schools. It's, it's, it's, it's just coming down.

We need, we need to show that it's worth something. There's gold in them. Our hills come and hang out with us. Let's do something extraordinary. But it takes the, the design community to step up and set fear aside. Like my friends at Soso who are, who are reinventing. The expression of design is, I keep calling it design far beyond buildings.

It's very, we just have such opportunity that I'm, we worried that we're squandering.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I, I guess my start to wrap up here, 'cause my, my kind of final, know, prompting or question is, is really around. What is your hope, and I, I think you just kind of alluded to it, right? What, what is your hope for AEC in the light of the latest existential crisis of ai?

Dave Gilmore: My hope is that the A and the E will come more and more together instead of this three headed thing that's going on.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: think that the design industries need to converge more instead of architects thinking engineers. Work for them. Uh, we got a kick out several years ago and moi got up at, at our event, he received our lifetime achievement award, and he showed his ching, he jewel airport, you know, the one with the, the water that comes down through the middle.

And right as he's putting up the deal, he says, and of course everybody knows it's him and his. Here he is live and in flesh standing. He's got this giant picture up behind him on the screen. And he goes, you see this design, I've received so many accolades and awards for this design, but it would never, ever have been possible without my friends here from Burrow.

Hap old. What an architect. An architect is praising the engineers. Unbelievable. Right? But he, what he was saying was, we are wholly interdependent. So if these design professions would start operating in an interdependence with the wild creativity, the architects and the discipline of the engineers. We could literally change the world.

Instead of being disrupted by others, we will self disrupt iteratively to higher and higher outcomes. And that's what I wanna see. That's what I wanna see happen. And I wanna see the, the design programs within schools starting to bring more and more of integrated design and the disciplines together, because that's where things already should be much less, where they are going.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I, I agree with that. And I had a, a lecturer in, in one of my courses I was teaching probably 2018 ish. And he, Alvin Huang from, he, he teaches at USC,

Dave Gilmore: Oh yeah.

Evan Troxel: his own synthesis design studio in Southern California. And, um, he shared this story with the students about working with engineers. Right. And, and I think, you know, a lot of times it's an adversarial relationship in that, you know, if, if an architect has a great idea, who's gonna push back? If you don't push back on yourselves, which a lot of firms do already, you know, oh, the client will never go for that. We don't even let the ideas out the door right before we're already stepping on them ourselves. But, but then the next, the next door is an engineer saying, oh, you can't do that. And then there's the contractor, oh, you can't do that.

And you're talking about, this kind of integration of these different design and engineering practices. He, he shared, he said that the engineers that I like working with are the ones who are up for an interesting challenge. And he gave specific examples. the engineer that he was sharing with this project that he was sharing was like, I can't wait to try to tackle

Dave Gilmore: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: this out. And that's the kind of thing that you're talking about, right? It's not, and, and we get to pick, you know, in, in the consultant arrangement, architects do get to pick who they want to work with. And I think a lot of times the people picking. Are looking at who's got the lowest fee, not who can provide the most value. And, and that's what we're trying to do too. We're trying to provide the most value to our clients in the

Dave Gilmore: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: side of things. Um, but a lot of times it's just, well, what's the bottom line? What's the number

Dave Gilmore: Yeah. And,

Evan Troxel: based on?

Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: instead of selling value, we're selling rates and there's, there's a different way to do it. Of course. There is no new thing under the sun, according to Solomon, the wise 3000 years ago. And he said, uh, you know, that idea that everything comes around, uh, I'm thinking of Ove Aup many years ago in his first speech, and he talked about total design.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Dave Gilmore: Have you ever read that? Have you ever read that speech? You, you gotta look it up.

Evan Troxel: yeah. I.

Dave Gilmore: You, it is called the first speech or key speech. And he gives this, this idea of the completely integrated disciplines coming together to provide total design. And it, and gosh, I mean, why aren't we doing that?

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Why

Dave Gilmore: Right.

Evan Troxel: that? Yep.

Dave Gilmore: Yeah.

Yeah. It's exciting, exciting adventures ahead. Uh, albeit I think many will not make the ride. They're gonna fall off over time. Disruption is not coming. It's already here. It will only exacerbate further. A reinvention, a re-identification of the design professions is already underway, and we are actually excited about it.

That's why we're called the Design Futures Council. We're speaking always about the future of design, not specific to architecture, but to all the design professions. How are you migrating into the future exploiting technology as appropriate for, for planetary and human benefit at the end of the day? And we just were very excited about what the future holds for us.

No fear in that. It'll be scary, but no fear.

Evan Troxel: So maybe that's the

Dave Gilmore: I.

Evan Troxel: this question, but maybe there's another ver version of it too, that because we, we talk about this multidimensional relationship of, you know, leadership and sustainability and, and business model and, and. Team makeup and integration with, with clients or with, with con consultants? when you, if you were, if, if somebody heard what you just said and is inspired to do something about their current state and they want to take their state from zero to one, whatever that is, that whatever that version is for them, what, where do they start? I mean, this, this to me is, is kind of like the what, what, what is your prompt to them to take action?

Dave Gilmore: Be the Uber guy. Step back and look at the commonly experienced repetitive problems and step out of yourself and ask yourself, if I could do, if I could look, go 360 around this, and I had no constraints whatsoever, money, time, talent, how would I do this differently? And it will result in a complete revolution of the design industry.

We are stuck in a paradigm so deep, we don't even know we're in that deep pit. And if we just get our head out and go, this is insane, this AEC continuum is so broken and we've invited so many of these parasites in, whether it's the legal and the insurance community or whatever, it is unbelievable that we can't do what we're supposed to do.

And so if you step out of that and ask yourself, Hey, if somebody gave me a hundred million dollars, would I do this differently or would I just hire a bunch more people and try to become another ginsler?

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: Could I do this differently with no constraints? And that's where you begin. That's what my friends at Soso did.

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Dave Gilmore: They stepped back and said, there's a better way. Why don't we step out and take a look at it? And, and, you know. What is it? Voltaire, uh, mark Twain plagiarized him and said, common sense is not so common. And, and that's what we're looking at right here.

Evan Troxel: You're

Dave Gilmore: Common sense.

Evan Troxel: David.

Dave Gilmore: Common sense. I read a lot, you know, I'm a, I'm an avid reader.

Common sense is not so common, and that's what we need to start applying is good common sense to the reinvention of this industry.

Evan Troxel: Well, I wanna share two cliches for a minute here to, to kind of wrap up. And the first one is you cannot get to where you going if you don't know where that is. Right. You

Dave Gilmore: Yes,

Evan Troxel: that end state. Of course you can adjust course correct along the way

and

Dave Gilmore: yes, yes.

Evan Troxel: but you have gotta start with the end in mind.

You cannot get there. And, and the other one is, and, and this was shared with me recently, was driving forward as fast as you can while looking in the rear view mirror. That is not the way to get. Where you're going, you are going to crash into something or you're gonna drive off the road. Right? Uh, your focus has to be on where you're trying to get, and you can't let anything stop you from getting there.

I mean, there's so many times it's like, many this ha The, the best example I could think of in the moment is like 2009, switching to Revit. Some companies like, oh, we, we've gotta do this. We're gonna do the project from beginning to end. And at some point someone raises the white flag and says, export to AutoCAD.

'cause we know that, right? Instead of working through the issues and investing in our future, we're gonna surrender to the process because it's difficult and we're gonna jump out and, and then we're gonna get right back into the wait and see kind of mentality about it. And

Dave Gilmore: I, I,

Evan Troxel: not the way to do it either.

Dave Gilmore: I know that every firm gets up every morning and goes. I gotta make money today. I've got employees, I've got overhead. And so thinking about some of these things that you and I are talking about is overwhelming quite. I mean, it's all kind of cool when I'm listening to this, but in reality, I got bills to pay.

I got stuff to do, I gotta employees, I gotta go out and try to get another gig or whatever, right?

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Dave Gilmore: My advice to that is this bifurcate take a,

Evan Troxel: Yes.

Dave Gilmore: take a, some of your people, run your business as you've running it, and create a parallel path. Borrow resources from the pool, put 'em in here with clear sprint level.

Assign sprint, not long. This isn't a long race. These are sprint level assignments and begin to reimagine and rebuild a parallel reality for your organization. Eventually you'll merge it over and you'll have changed it and you, because you can't just stop and reinvent

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Dave Gilmore: and so therefore, most, most don't do anything but.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dave Gilmore: It doesn't cost you that much. If anything, really take three of your smart people, put 'em on a path. Let 'em run for 90 days with clear deliverables and objectives. At the end of that time, step, look at it, make some decisions, rotate some of those folks off, rotate some other curious people on, let 'em run for another.

I'm telling you, in 12 months you'll have new solutions and maybe, uh, a completely new organization.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, and I, I would add to that, that that sprint should be a defined amount of time, and it

Dave Gilmore: Yep.

Evan Troxel: and it should be stuck to, I would say, six weeks and only plan for those six weeks. And when you get to the next sprint. Redefine where you're going. If you need to make modifications, that's when you do it.

Dave Gilmore: That's when you do it.

Evan Troxel: to operate like that because you

Dave Gilmore: Yep. Yep.

Evan Troxel: let's set a one year goal and we'll break that up into six week sprints and never readjust you. You are going to learn things along the way that you will force you to readjust, and you should use that as an opportunity to do so. I think that that's, that's

Dave Gilmore: Yeah. Yeah. And don't, don't create a parking list of, I'll get to it. Don't create the, the parking lot of list that says, oh, oh, we'll get back to that. We'll get back to that. 'cause you know what? You won't take the six weeks, identify the problems, solve those problems, move on,

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Dave Gilmore: and, and you'll, you just extraordinary things can happen.

And what you and I just said is common sense.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, you cannot eat the whole whale at once, right? You've gotta

Dave Gilmore: Yep.

Evan Troxel: the whale one bite at a time.

Dave Gilmore: Yeah, that's, that's right.

Evan Troxel: sprints, that's what those sprints are designed for. I, I love the advice. Dave, thank you so much for this conversation today. I think it's been super valuable and, and not just, um, something that I hope people will say, oh, that was a nice conversation, but that'll actually inspire them to do something. and I, you, you were the man to do this today. So thank you so

Dave Gilmore: Well, thank, thank you so much. It's an honor to be here with you and I I will do it again.