Search results

By Mark Zweig | Long-term firm owners stay motivated by evolving the business, mentoring emerging leaders, and staying close to the action.

By Mark Zweig | LinkedIn is just one tool in your marketing arsenal, but it can be powerful when used consistently and strategically.

By Mark Zweig | Most AEC firms play it safe with bland marketing, but bold, consistent outreach is what actually drives results.

By Jeremy Clarke | The key to embracing growth without giving up what made your firm great in the first place.

Zweig Group is the leading AEC Industry advisory service provider. We blend industry and sector knowledge with experience across the M&A lifecycle to help you capture value for shareholders. Reach our Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory team...

By Elizabeth Preston | How do AEC industry businesses use artificial intelligence effectively and responsibly for writing?

By Mark Zweig | Choosing the right partners for your business, and then keeping a good relationship with them, has always been an important subject.

By Kyle Ahern | Gathering data on your employees’ experience is the first step, then you have to create action items to effect positive change.

By Kraig Kern | Real innovation is about a shift in perspective to progress forward, not the latest gadget or software.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of Mancini Duffy, a national design firm based in NYC with a 100-year-old history and tech-forward approach specializing in architecture, planning, and interior design.

By Will Anderson | When coming into the market to acquire a firm, it’s often wise to expand your horizons and think outside the box.

Knowing who does what, who needs to weigh in, and who makes the final decision is critical to success.

By Liisa Andreassen | Chairman and CEO of Landry/French (Scarborough, ME), a 100 percent employee-owned commercial construction company.

By Mark Zweig | Here are 12 things you can actually change in your business that will help you win the talent war.

By Phil Keil | This will inform your strategy development and ultimately allow you to build a legacy.

By Sara Parkman | Improved representation improves our ability to problem-solve, to be strategic with our strengths, and to think critically and comprehensively about topics.

By Mark Zweig | Marketing starts with identifying who your target clients are. Your entire business needs to be focused on them.

By Mark Zweig | Best practices may be safe, but they won’t differentiate your firm. Make these changes and your firm will stand out.

By Mark Zweig | “My good friend of more than 25 years, Jack Portman passed away suddenly on the morning of August 28.”

“Are you trying to play the role of the high-flying entrepreneurial CEO in a large firm with lots of resources instead of thinking of yourself as a business owner?”

“When it comes to branding for an AEC firm, I wouldn’t look to other AEC firms. Frankly, we make a lot of branding mistakes in this business.”

After just two years, they want to be the CEO. Molding the go-getters (early on) is crucial if you don’t want them to leave for better opportunities at another firm. OK, two years might be...

President and CEO of Wade Trim (Hot Firm #76 for 2017), a 500-person multidisciplinary engineering and consulting firm based in Detroit. By Liisa Andreassen Correspondent “Organic growth is going to become more difficult as recruiting...

Here is the full transcript of a great conversation that we had with Mark Zweig. He gave us a history lesson on AECWorkforce and the importance of an effective job board for the Design and...

Here is the full transcript of a great conversation that we had with Mark Zweig. He gave us a history lesson on AECWorkforce and the importance of an effective job board for the Design and...

We are a bunch of conformists. It’s a big problem in the AEC business. Everyone is sitting around waiting to do what the other guy is doing. And this is precisely the WRONG course of...

As social media continues to change, so too does the way it affects the A/E industry. Stay in touch with the times or get left behind. Architecture, engineering, planning, and environmental consulting firms appear to...

We are all a part of a very mature AEC industry. That means the market is huge but supply has long caught up with demand. When that happens, certain other things happen. These include: Clients...

Anyone who knows me can tell you I’m about as “New Age” as the 1930 Model A Ford sitting in my garage awaiting its flathead V-8 transplant. That said, there really is something to the...

While success and security are good things, they can also zap your energy, so find something new. Chances are, if you’re reading this, things have gone pretty well for you. The company is doing well...

More so than the everyday small business, organizations that aim to grow must employ specific types of people. Not every A/E or environmental firm is an entrepreneurial firm. But, if you’re reading this, odds are...

HKS, Inc. (Dallas, TX), a 1,000-person architecture firm, is taking home third place in the Special Event category of Zweig Group’s 2015 Marketing Excellence Awards for its JOIN US event. 2014 marked HKS’ 75th anniversary....

Need help identifying targets for potential recruiting? The answer is in the headline. Sometimes in the recruiting world, you’ll hear the term “sourcing.” It sounds like something you would hear in the buying/procurement business, right?...

Eight suggestions from Mark Zweig to motivate staff, from office decor to proposal-making. I can’t stand it when my seven-year-old tells us how bored she is. Drives me absolutely insane! But I’m afraid that boredom...

There may be something missing in your firm after the recession, Mark Zweig writes. The recession of the last six- to 8 years has been hard on the A/E/P and environmental consulting business. Many companies...

By Jeff Clark, Managing Director & Principal, Investment Banking Get out there and make it happen. Tell people, from your accountant to your attorney to your friends and business associates on all your social networks,...

By Jeff Clark From a personal viewpoint, I often wondered in the past what I would say, and with such frequency, on this celebrity-glamorized and ego-centric platform called Twitter. I’m not John Mayer and if...

By Mark C. Zweig Many folks in our business want to act like they have a “purpose-driven organization.” What is that, you may ask? To me it is very simply a company that exists for...

As a board member for an international engineering firm I have recently been participating in a series of interviews and meetings related to their brand. What their brand is, how to make it real, and...

More and more design and environmental firms are adding outsiders to their Boards of Directors. There are many reasons for doing so but that’s not the point of this article. Instead, what I want to...

When it comes to architecture, engineering, and environmental firms, or just about any business for that matter, weird can be good. How so? Being weird means being memorable. Being memorable translates into more calls from...

It’s been said many times— you have to focus if you want to succeed. Yet focus is precisely what so many design and environmental professionals lack. My theory is that architects, engineers, planners, and scientists...

I just got back from ZweigWhite’s 2007 A/E Marketing Now Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was our biggest and best-attended marketing conference ever! My task was to open the show with a short talk...

On the whole, A/E/P and environmental firms seem to take themselves and their marketing too seriously. Sure— many of you DO have life-and-death responsibilities attached to much of what you do. You are serious people...

There’s a lot of interest in training in A/E/P and environmental firms. But, there’s also nearly as much money and time wasted on training in these same firms. I’ve been both a provider and participant...

There are many experts on time management that I see used periodically by A/E and environmental firms. These people are brought in from the outside to help train our principals, PMs, and technical and design...

We held our 2004 AEC Mergers and Acquisitions Summit at the Biltmore in Coral Gables, Florida, the first week in December. The food and accommodations were great, and the meetings were a success. As someone...

For each of the past five years since we created The Zweig Letter Hot Firm List, there have always been readers out there who write in to ask why we are so obsessed with growth...

This is really getting to be the busy time of the year for the ZweigWhite consultants who help firms with business planning. And it’s good to see that many firms are refining their processes so...

We just ended our most successful Zweig Letter Hot Firm conference ever. It was successful from three points of view— attendance numbers, attendance quality, and speaker quality. I won’t bore you with the numbers but...

George Alexandra was fed up. He was tired of always having to take a back seat to his partner, Mick Flashyman. “Just because Flashyman started the company (Godlike Architects, Inc.) didn’t mean it wouldn’t be...

Doug Pocketprotectus sat in the high-backed leather chair in the executive conference room and desperately tried to stay awake. It was hard to do. The meeting was so boring, and he was sleep deprived as...

Curt Robinson closed his middle desk drawer with a resounding thud. “This is the last time I’ll be sitting here,” he thought to himself as he threw last year’s calendar into the cardboard box of...

Just got back from the Spring Meeting of ASFE: Professional Firms Practicing in the Geosciences (Silver Spring, MD) in Atlanta. I think the management and volunteers do a wonderful job. They had about 140 top...

While we’re big believers in building a brand name for your firm through a variety of means so your phone rings off the hook with new opportunities, we also know that somebody has to eventually...

At one of my “Managing a Growing Firm” seminars a few weeks ago, I had an attendee tell me how another attendee was handling his ownership transition program. When I asked him who was offering...

Here are some quick thoughts on a few issues: Pay or don’t buy. There have been a number of articles in the business press recently dealing with ethics issues. One that I read involved a...

At our new “Managing a Growing Firm” seminar series, which kicked off last week in Boston, a hard-driving CEO from a local area firm took exception to one of our recommendations on how to improve...

Although I sometimes wish I were more clever or entertaining than I am, writing about what makes A/E/P or environmental firms more successful is what you pay me to do. Occasionally I think I sound...

One of my associates and I recently went to Idaho to visit a new consulting client— Power Engineers, Inc. (Hailey, ID). Without question, one of the high points of our trip was meeting their CEO...

We’re in the throes of our annual business planning process here at ZWA. You know the routine— get everyone together, have an office party and a holiday dinner at a nice restaurant and spend a...

Most A/E/P and environmental firms spend a lot of money just for the opportunity to make a presentation to a client. You send your technical/professional staff chasing all over the countryside, hither and yon, looking...

This is the time of year that many A/E/P and environmental consulting firms hold an annual management retreat. The larger a firm is, the more likely it is to have a retreat. Typically at these...

What’s the best way to motivate staff people? When faced with that question, most firm principals think about what to give them. The experts tell us to pay spot bonuses for an effort that goes...

Anyone in the business of planning, architecture, land surveying, consulting engineering, or environmental consulting knows it’s tough. It’s hard enough just to survive, much less make money. The same goes for our business. We provide...