EA198: How to Overcome the Fear of Growing Beyond You as a Small Firm Architect [Podcast]

How to Overcome the Fear of Growing Beyond You as a Small Firm Architect For years, Sheri teetered back and forth between staying small and practicing as a small practitioner or making plans for growth and executing toward a bigger future. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, How to Overcome the Fear of Growing Beyond You as a Small Firm Architect with Sheri Scott of Springhouse Architects.  Background Sheri is a member of EntreArchitect, but her and Mark connected online a long time ago and have been supporting one another as architects for a while. As a founder and principal at Springhouse Architects,  Sheri’s mission is to lead clients through the building process with the clients in control and Springhouse as their guide, advocate, and ally. With over 20 years of experience in residential architecture, Sheri brings knowledge and confidence to every custom home project. She’s a graduate of the University of Cincinnati and has her NCARB license. Sheri’s also lead architect on three HOA boards and volunteers extensively with her son’s high school marching band. She also feels privileged to be a mentor to teenage girls. She lives in Ohio with her husband and three boys. Origin Story Sheri’s moment of discovering architecture wasn’t very inspiring. When she was in high school after her parents’ recent divorce and her older siblings moved out to go to college, she was lost and her grades dropped. She was called to the counselor’s office, and they asked if she wanted to be an engineer. Everyone in her family was an engineer, so she wasn’t interested in that. The one class she was interested in was drafting. To get out of the office, she agreed to apply to architecture school. She was accepted at University of Cincinnati and found the direction that she needed there. She wasn’t an artistic architecture student, but enjoyed the structure and the design classes. Sheri married before she graduated and had her first child the year after she finished school. The process of looking for a job with a six month old was different than many of those she graduated with; she had a lot of parameters in place. After searching, she found Atelier Design close to home. They let her work part time with a flexible schedule. She was able to focus on her family but build the foundation of her career at the same time. She worked there for twelve years until the crash in 2008. At that point, a lot of things happened that created the perfect storm. Her husband, John, lost his job and they took it as a sign that it was time for the next thing. John got a new job in Indianapolis, and they picked up and moved their whole family – now three boys – from Ohio to Indiana. Everything fell apart there. When Sheri left Ohio, she started Scott Architecture and negotiated one of the builders from her old job with her and her work was back in Ohio. They decided to move back and start over. After that, every month got a little bit better than the last. How did things turn around? In 2013, Sheri connected with EntreArchitect. That was another defining year in her career. She had to make a five year plan and she was amazed that putting her life goals on paper looked totally different than it did at that moment in time. Her whole career had been a balance of family and working, and she was happy doing that. She know, however, that in 2020 all her kids would be out of the house. Where did that leave her then? She’d built a whole career balancing things, and looking down the road looks different than...

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