Strong firms know what they must own internally and where outside expertise can accelerate progress.
I’ve become a pretty big Ina Garten fan over the years, and one of her most famous lines has always stuck with me: “If you can’t make it yourself, store bought is fine.”
It’s simple, practical, and a little refreshing in a world where everyone seems determined to make things harder than they need to be. The more time we spend around AEC firms, the more convinced I am that a lot of firm leaders could stand to take Ina’s advice.
AEC leaders are natural problem-solvers. That instinct is part of what made them successful in the first place. They have spent their careers figuring out difficult problems, managing risk, working within constraints, and delivering when the answer was not obvious. When something breaks, they fix it. When something does not exist, they build it.
That mindset works pretty well when you are designing a hospital, planning a roadway, or solving a complicated water problem. It can become a liability when it convinces leaders they should personally engineer every part of the business too.
We still see firms spending enormous amounts of internal time building systems, dashboards, financial models, recruiting programs, marketing plans, strategic initiatives, and technology solutions that already exist somewhere else. Sometimes the internal version is genuinely better or tailored to the firm. Other times, if we are being honest, it is three spreadsheets held together by good intentions and one employee who is never allowed to leave.
Why doing everything in-house can cost more
This usually is not a question of capability. AEC firms are full of people smart enough to figure almost anything out. The better question is whether they should be spending their time figuring it out.
That distinction gets lost more often than it should. Leaders will spend hundreds of hours trying to save the firm from writing a check, even when those hours are worth considerably more than the check. The cost never appears neatly on the income statement, so everyone congratulates themselves for being resourceful. Meanwhile, strategic initiatives crawl along, growth opportunities get missed, and the people who should be leading the firm are buried in work someone else could probably do better and faster.
There is a fine line between being resourceful and being cheap. Too many firms cross it and call the result “entrepreneurial.”
Why AEC firms should apply specialization to their own businesses
The irony is that AEC firms understand specialization better than almost any other industry. Their entire business model is built around clients paying for expertise they do not have internally. Clients hire architects, engineers, planners, surveyors, and environmental consultants because getting the right answer matters, and because developing that expertise themselves would be wildly inefficient.
But inside the firm, that same logic can disappear. Suddenly, the controller is expected to become a strategic CFO, the marketing coordinator is supposed to build a national brand between proposal deadlines, and principals are dabbling in recruiting, technology, ownership transition, and strategic planning whenever they can find an open hour on the calendar.
Then everyone wonders why progress is slow.
The firms separating themselves right now seem much more comfortable bringing in outside expertise when it makes sense. That could mean fractional financial leadership, specialized recruiting support, outside strategic planning facilitation, industry benchmarking data, marketing expertise, or a strategic partner that has already encountered the problem a hundred times.
They are not handing over the keys to the business. They are buying experience, speed, perspective, and, in many cases, a few hard truths that are difficult to hear from people inside the organization.
Speed deserves more attention here. A firm that spends two years developing something internally that could have been implemented in six months has not necessarily saved money. It may have lost 18 months of better information, better decisions, and better performance. It also burned leadership attention, which may be the most expensive and poorly tracked resource in the entire firm.
Where outside expertise can help firms move faster
Finance is an obvious example. Many growing AEC firms have reached a level of complexity where they need more than accounting. They need forecasting, scenario planning, better visibility into performance, and someone who can challenge the assumptions behind major decisions. That does not always mean hiring a full-time CFO. Sometimes the right answer is buying the expertise you need at the level you need it.
Marketing is another area where the homemade approach is starting to show its age. For years, a large portion of the AEC industry treated marketing as a support function, mostly responsible for proposals, holiday cards, and making sure the logo was the right size. Some firms are still operating that way. Others are investing aggressively in brand visibility, research, content, client experience, and business development infrastructure.
The gap between those two groups is becoming pretty hard to miss.
The same applies to benchmarking. Firm leaders frequently tell us their business is unique, and in plenty of ways it is. But “we’re different” can also become a convenient excuse for not comparing performance, questioning old assumptions, or learning from what better-performing firms are doing. Your firm may be special, but it probably has not discovered an entirely new form of math.
The firms most willing to use outside expertise are often the ones most confident in who they are. They know what makes them different, what they should own internally, and where someone else can help them move faster. They do not treat asking for help as an admission of weakness. They treat it as part of running a serious business.
What leaders should own and what they should delegate
This is not an argument for outsourcing everything or chasing every consultant who shows up with a slick presentation. Some things should absolutely remain inside the firm. Culture, client relationships, leadership development, and the firm’s ultimate direction cannot simply be handed off to someone else. Outside expertise should sharpen internal leadership, not replace it.
But a principal trying to become a part-time CFO, marketing strategist, recruiter, technology consultant, and ownership transition expert is not demonstrating leadership range. More likely, that person is spreading expensive attention across five jobs and doing none of them particularly well.
Sometimes DIY is admirable. Sometimes it is just ego with a spreadsheet.
The real job of leadership is not to prove that the firm can do everything itself. It is to decide what the firm must be great at, protect the people and resources that make those things possible, and find the smartest way to handle the rest.
And for anyone who only knows Ina Garten as the woman making roast chicken on the Food Network, she is considerably more formidable than that description suggests. Before building the Barefoot Contessa brand, she worked in nuclear energy policy and budget analysis in the White House during the Ford and Carter administrations. She has also spent years supporting philanthropic causes. She understands something about substance, reinvention, and making deliberate choices about where to spend time and energy.
Maybe that is the real lesson. The goal is not to make everything yourself. The goal is to build an exceptional firm.
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside hundreds of AEC firms at nearly every stage of growth. Rarely is the difference between firms that consistently outperform their peers and those that struggle a matter of technical talent. More often, it comes down to whether leadership can recognize where its time creates the most value and whether it is willing to invest in the people, systems, data, and expertise needed to keep moving.
I’ve never heard a firm leader say, “I wish we had spent more time reinventing the wheel.” I have heard plenty say they wish they had made the right investment sooner. Sometimes, store bought really is fine.
Zweig Group advisory services helps AEC firms strengthen talent, improve performance, accelerate growth, and navigate transition. From executive search and career pathing to financial management, strategic planning, marketing, valuation, M&A, and ownership transition, our consultants bring the industry expertise firms need to move forward with greater clarity and confidence.
Learn more about Zweig Group advisory services and find the right support for your firm.
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Chad Coldiron is a principal and director of client relations and development at Zweig Group. Contact him at ccoldiron@zweiggroup.com. |
