Feb 8, 2026 · 1 hr · 11 segments
Being your own boss isn’t about starting a firm. It’s about control, momentum, money, and owning the tradeoffs shaping your career long before you noticed.
Andrew HawkinsHostAnd today we're talking about being your own boss because a lot of architects reach a point in their career where or at least a point where in their career, it's technically successful, but oddly, strangely, even unexamined work keeps coming in.
I know that I can look back through my career and identify all these little touchstone moments that happened that kind of either propelled me along the same path I was already on or shot me off to one side or another.
And normally I only considered one aspect of the decision I was making rather than how did it fit into some kind of grand master plan.
Larger scheme or that I thought was going one direction and maybe didn't quite
Not that it sent you in a completely different direction, but just a little, just a bit outside, right? Just not quite the same.
You know, the thing is, is so we did an episode, it was episode 73 and it was, you know, it also had to be with becoming your own boss.
And that had to do with the thrill or the, the idea that almost every architect I've talked to, or at least it seems like a majority of them at one time or another thought about opening their own firm.
Like how many lawyers think I want to start my own firm as opposed to they want to go somewhere and say, I want to be a partner in this firm, not have my own company.
Because we know that having your own company has a lot more to do than with doing the work.
And I would say of my 45, 48 graduating students from the master's program here, I would say at least half of them have talked to me about my one day I want to own my own firm.
And today we're talking about being your own boss because a lot of architects reach a point in their career where or at least a point where in their career, it's technically successful, but oddly, strangely, even unexamined work keeps coming in.
I know that I can look back through my career and identify all these little touchstone moments that happened that kind of either propelled me along the same path I was already on or shot me off to one side or another.
And normally I only considered one aspect of the decision I was making rather than how did it fit into some kind of grand master plan.
Larger scheme or that I thought was going one direction and maybe didn't quite
Not that it sent you in a completely different direction, but just a little, just a bit outside, right? Just not quite the same.
You know, the thing is, is so we did an episode, it was episode 73 and it was, you know, it also had to be with becoming your own boss.
And that had to do with the thrill or the, the idea that almost every architect I've talked to, or at least it seems like a majority of them at one time or another thought about opening their own firm.
Like how many lawyers think I want to start my own firm as opposed to they want to go somewhere and say, I want to be a partner in this firm, not have my own company.
Because we know that having your own company has a lot more to do than with doing the work.
And I would say of my 45, 48 graduating students from the master's program here, I would say at least half of them have talked to me about my one day I want to own my own firm.
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