My story in rising through the ranks and taking over ownership of my father’s architectural firm, Sente & Rubel Architects

By Carol Sente

“Don’t worry, I won’t"

Every Saturday morning as my dad left for the architectural firm he managed, he would say “Hurry up girls, you are spending the day with me while mom gets her hair done at the friseur.”  While dad reviewed plans and marked up drawings, my sisters and I ran up and down the rows of drafting desks and played with electric erasers, T-squares, and plastic templates until lunchtime. 

In high school, over the summer, I got to dress up and welcome clients and vendors to our O’Hare office, escort them into the conference room for project meetings, type specifications on a typewriter (complete with white-out, ruler, scissors and tape) and run blueprints through a machine that stunk of ammonia.  In later years, I built a model of my childhood home with my dad and learned how architects “letter” the alphabet on graph paper.  However, in the evenings as my dad kissed me good night, he warned me…..never become an architect; they don’t make any money and work too many hours.  Don’t worry dad, I told him, I won’t.  I don’t want to sit behind a desk all day.

Living the high life

Flash forward, I graduate Indiana University Kelley School of Business in Marketing/Advertising and I’m living the high life in Chicago working at an ad agency.  Good timing, I had just given my boss two weeks’ notice because he wouldn’t give me a raise to match my peer’s salary and let me have some of my own clients like he had promised.  My dad came to meet me on Michigan Avenue to take me for lunch and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.  How would you like to work for me, start our Marketing Department and make $5,000 per year more than you are currently making?  (Hesitantly I said, ok, I will start it for you but then I’m going back to advertising because I want to own my own firm….but I never left.)

Identifying opportunities for growth

Unsuccessful Interview

I hang up the phone after a debriefing call regarding a lost new project opportunity.  The prospective owner is chuckling about an architectural interview team he spied out his window in their parking lot before their interview, walking in opposite directions, two firm employees look like they are arguing, and the entire situation looks like a comedy of errors.  He doesn’t know which firm it was but somehow, I get the feeling I know.

Profit Improvement

I’m paging through the McGraw Hill A/E Firm Benchmarking Report for average profits for small size architectural firms and see double digits and am pretty sure our firm’s average hasn’t cracked the single digits.  We have no master contract form, and our firm’s “scope creep” is more like scope LEAP with average collection days frequently exceeding 60 days.

Project Management

I’m writing a proposal response for a new job and ask our top three project managers to explain how they manage their projects and which construction method our firm prefers and everyone gives me a different answer.

Succession Planning

The managing partner walks into my office one day and shows me a resume from a competing firm’s senior architect who wants to work at our firm because the firm owner is 79, retiring and closing his practice, and I ask, “What is our succession plan?”

Process Improvement

I’m visiting my parent’s house for dinner and my mom and I are clearing the table.  She pulls me aside and says, your father tells me you are driving him a little crazy at work.  He wonders why his marketing director keeps asking so many questions, “Why do we do it this way?”

There has to be a better way…

I loved our firm.  We were a good solid architectural generalist, with great staff and decent clients.  We had a great reputation for producing thorough and well-prepared construction documents and clients loved our service mentality.  Yet somehow, we lost more than our share of work, weren’t consistently cranking out profitable jobs, had decent looking, highly functional finished products, and every project manager, while able to please the client, had their own way of doing things.  There just has to be a better way. 

My dad and his business partner call me and two senior architects into the conference room and closed the door.  Out of the blue, my dad says, “Who is interested in being a firm owner?”

Without really thinking about the details, I raise my hand and say, “I do”?

One architect says, “I’m interested.”

Another says, “What does that entail?”