Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
I’m giving away a free t-shirt on April 1st, 2015 exclusively to Architect This City subscribers. There’s no catch. And no this is not an April Fool’s joke! I just want to say thanks to the people who read ATC on a regular basis. It’s that simple.
So how does it work?
You need to be an Architect This City email subscriber (either daily or weekly). If you’re not yet a subscriber, you have until midnight on Tuesday, March 31st, 2015 to make that happen. You can do that by clicking here. It’s free.
You need to visit architectthiscity.com and pick the t-shirt you want. There are currently 5 different ones to chose from (the original ATC tee comes in both ATC orange and black).
Finally, you need to leave a comment at the bottom of this post telling the community 2 things: which t-shirt you want and your favorite thing about your own city. That’s it.
On April 1st I will randomly select somebody from the comments, check to see if they’re a subscriber, and then send them a free t-shirt.
Simple, right? I’m really looking forward to giving away a t-shirt.
I’ve made a few changes around here. If you’re reading this post on the actual site (as opposed to via Tumblr, your email subscription, or some other feed) and you’re a regular reader, you might notice that I’ve completely redesigned the look and feel of Architect This City. If you can’t see it and want to take a look, click here.
It’s something that I’ve been meaning to do for awhile now. And it’s because I haven’t been happy with how this blog showed up on mobile devices. It wasn’t responsive. That made ATC less enjoyable to read on your phone and it made it a bit of a pain to leave comments. And since almost 35% of readers are on mobile (and that number is only going to go up), it was time to make a change.
This site now looks more or less the same whether you’re viewing it on your desktop or on your phone. I also made sure to make the font nice and big so it’s an easy read on mobile. I think it’s a big improvement. But I’d love to also get your feedback on the redesign. I hope you like it as well and I hope it leads to more frequent discussions in the comment section 🙂
There are a lot of great architecture firms in Toronto, but one that I’ve been following for years is Solares Architecture. Founded by a husband and wife – Tom Knezic and Christine Lolley – the firm focuses on “environmentally integrated homes”, which is simply their title for incredibly sustainable and efficient homes.
I discovered the firm a few years ago when I was trying to get my laneway house off the ground, and they were unbelievably helpful. That laneway house is still a work in progress (more on that in the coming week), but I’ve followed the firm ever since. They have an awesome blog where they have meticulously profiled the renovation of their own environmentally integrated home. Their new home was also recently featured in the Globe and Mail.
As more and more people wake up to the importance of sustainability, I think that firms such as Solares Architecture are going to become even more important. This is not just about a LEED rating, it’s about a mission. And I think that’s also great for the profession of architecture because it expresses a clear value proposition: this is not just about stye (though that’s important); this is about measurable performance.
Last month marked the one year anniversary of Architect This City. This means that I’ve been blogging every day for over a year. It’s been an incredible journey and I often tell people that they should give it a try if they have any inclination.
So today, I’d like to share some of the things I’ve learned over the past year. I actually started this post at the end of last month, but I needed some time to collect my thoughts. Now that they’re collected, here are 10 things I learned from blogging every day for a year:
1. Starting from zero sucks
Lots of people have grand ambitions of blogging their way to prosperity. But then they start and they realize it sucks. It’s incredibly difficult to write content on a regular basis when all you get back is crickets. All you’re doing is giving without getting anything in return. But that’s why starting anything from nothing is always difficult.
2. Passion actually means tenacity
When people say that you should follow your passion (you know that cliche), what they’re really getting at is that anything worth doing is going to be a complete and utter slog at times. And the only way to make it through those periods is to actually enjoy the journey enough so that you keep doing it when it’s not so fun.
3. Accomplishment has a lot to do with momentum
As much as starting sucks, once you get going you develop momentum. People start telling you that they read your stuff every day and you get addicted. You realize that you can’t stop. Somebody is actually reading what I’m writing! You also notice that things are starting to snowball. For example, it took me about 11 months to get 250 followers on Tumblr. It then took me another 3 days to break through 2,000. There’s a snowball effect.
4. It gets easier
I follow wine guy and internet marketer Gary Vaynerchuk. I love his energy. And one of the things he’s said about his father’s wine business, that he famously helped grow, is that even though he took it from $3 million in sales to $45 million in sales, he recognizes that the truly hard part was actually going from zero to 3. Starting from nothing is hard.
5. Good things come from putting yourself out there
Often I’ve found that my most popular posts have been the ones that I felt a little uncomfortable posting or that I quickly wrote without seconding guessing myself. Social media and internet marketing today, at least in my view, is all about being authentic, genuine, and as transparent as you or your business can afford to be. Because that’s what engages people.
6. Constraints can be great for creativity
I can be a bit of a perfectionist. It’s the designer in me. In architecture school, my favorite line was: Perfection or nothing. I got it from the German engineering and design firm, Werner Sobek. But perfectionism can be a debilitating. Sometimes it becomes a form of procrastination, which is why I decided to write every day. Because then you don’t always have the time to be a perfectionist. You just have to post. And that can be a great thing. As Steve Jobs used to say, real artists ship.
7. The internet democratizes
When you write a blog and put yourself out there publicly, people all of a sudden consider you an authority. They want to know your opinion and they begin to consider you as an expert in the topic you write about. Now, I’m not suggesting that I’m an expert on cities, but I think it’s incredibly powerful that people now associate me with cities, real estate, design, and all the other things that I’m passionate about.
8. Everybody is their own media company
This ties into the last point. What shows up first when you Google your name? Do you use social media? Do you own and manage your firstnamelastname.com? (i.e. brandondonnelly.com) In other words, what is your personal brand? It used to be hard to put yourself out there. The media channels were simply too expensive for individuals to start building their own brands. But today, anybody can create a free account on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, and all the other social channels that people are now using to market. And that means that each and every one of us is basically their own little media company.
9. The benefits of blogging are indirect
All that said, the benefits of blogging for me, so far at least, have all been indirect. I’ve probably only made a total of $300 in revenue directly attributed to this blog. But I didn’t start blogging to make money. I started writing because I knew that it was going to be beneficial to get my thoughts down on paper every day (it’s my public journal). I knew that I was going to learn a lot from others and the process. And I knew that it was going to be a great networking tool.
10. Lots of people care about cities
Given the mission of Architect This City, this is probably the most important takeaway from the past year: Lots of people care deeply about cities and the built environment. I initially thought that it was just going to be city geeks like myself that would enjoy what I was writing. But it turns out that city dwellers and urbanists all over the world recognize the importance of building great cities. We know that the majority of the world’s population now lives in a city, and so it makes sense for us to address something that impacts so many people’s lives.
On that note, thanks for reading Architect This City. I’m incredibly grateful. Here’s to another year!
Image: Pinterest (I like blogging with my morning coffee)
This past weekend was a milestone weekend for Architect This City. The number of email subscribers surpassed 100 people for the first time. Now, that may not seem like a lot of people, but I think it is. I’m incredibly proud of and grateful for each and every one of you who subscribe to ATC. If I had all of your photos, I would make a collage just like the one above and call it “the first 100.”
The reason I think 100 people is a lot is because I think of an email inbox as an incredibly personal thing. We live in an age of too much information and our inboxes certainly reflect that. So for somebody to invite and accept the ATC email into their inbox every morning (only a few people subscribe weekly), I consider that to be a big deal. Thank you for that. It really does mean a lot to me.
I try to ensure that I’m always delivering value to you, which is why I ask for your industry on the full subscription page. I want to know where you’re coming from so that I can do my best to write content that will help you professionally, and perhaps even in life. But if you signed up elsewhere, you may have only entered your email. If you’d like to add your industry, click on “update subscription preferences” at the bottom of one of my emails.
So far, I know that many of you are architects, city planners, real estate developers, brokers, policy makers, finance people, marketers, and entrepreneurs–to name only a few.
If you have any specific feedback or have a topic you’d like to see covered on ATC, please feel free to email me or reply to this email (if you’re already a subscriber). I keep a queue of draft posts and I do eventually get to them when the timing is right. Finally, if you feel that somebody within your network would also get value out of what we’re all doing here at ATC, I would really appreciate it if you forwarded this email or shared this post.
Every employee in a company depends on the CEO to make fast, high quality decisions. Often any decision, even the wrong decision, is better than no decision. These decisions are pulse of the organization. Sharing command almost guarantees that the CEO position will perform poorly in this dimension.
