Banking on KC – Christian Arnold of Clockwork
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Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is Christian Arnold, the founder of Clockwork, an architecture and design firm. Welcome, Christian.
Christian Arnold:
Thank you, Kelly.
Kelly Scanlon:
Christian, Clockwork integrates what you describe as the emotional connection that people have with brands to a physical space itself. So tell us about how Clockwork accomplishes that.
Christian Arnold:
Yeah, that sounds a little marketing jargony, doesn't it?
Kelly Scanlon:
The reason I'm fascinated with that is because you must really have to get to know your customers to figure out what their emotional connection to a space could be in order to make the space express that. So-
Christian Arnold:
Exactly. I'm so glad that you kind of thought that, and we try to put these things out there as a test just to see what it makes people think about it. So that's exactly it. We look at design as a leverage tool, and how do we use that tool to help a company grow their brand? And much of that comes down to the emotional connection that they have when you walk into a space or when you see a building, but most of the time it's on the interior. A good example, electric vehicles, when they first came out, they weren't that exciting. Right? Then came along. Tesla. People looked at that, and said, oh, I want that. There's an emotional connection to it. And so we see that the same way with the spaces that we design or the buildings that we create. We live in Kansas, City, so we're a barbecue town. Everybody has their favorites.
A couple of our clients are Meat Mitch and Char Bar. So when you walk into those spaces, you feel differently just the aesthetic than if you walk into Arthur Bryant's, or Gates. So there's an emotional connection that you have. Chefs also say that you eat with your eyes first. And so when we walk into a space, we want to kind of start to warm up the pallet. So we try to just look at that business, and then how can we use design as a leverage tool?
Kelly Scanlon:
So the design isn't the first thing, the first thing is connecting with your client and getting to know what drives them and their customers. And then you come up with the design that's going to be able to leverage that. That's going to be able to bring that out. Tell us about what finally inspired you to take the entrepreneurial leap. You've worked at a lot of different architecture firms and design firms here in the area. When was the moment, or maybe it was a gradual progression, but what led you to entrepreneurship?
Christian Arnold:
I feel very blessed. I found out early in my life what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an architect since I was in the fifth grade, worked for a bunch of firms, worked for four or five firms, maybe more, before I graduated, moved to Boston for a large firm, one of the largest in the world. I was design director in that office. Great experience. And I just loved how they treated their people fairly and took care of them. And that showed me what an organization could be structured like. Moved back to Kansas City. I was working for a couple of firms here. It was just common in those days, and maybe it still is, to work lots and lots of overtime. It was something that started in school, kind of an old-fashioned tradition. And we would have these sessions where it was mandatory overtime, where everyone had to just be working all the time. It just kind of caused a lot of burnout.
And so, one night I was working mandatory overtime at one of these companies, and my wife called and told me she was going into labor with our firstborn son. It still triggers me every time I tell the story, but here I was working on this project, and I wasn't there for my wife, and I knew there had to be a better way. So that's what made me take the leap.
Kelly Scanlon:
And so many entrepreneurs, they start their business because they know that they're highly skilled, and they know that there is a better way. And a lot of times it centers around the way they've been treated.
Christian Arnold:
And a lot of naivety, if I knew now what I knew then, but-
Kelly Scanlon:
A lot of it is because they are highly skilled, but they don't have any business acumen.
Christian Arnold:
Oh my goodness.
Kelly Scanlon:
And so.
Christian Arnold:
Absolutely true.
Kelly Scanlon:
How have you built the company since then, given that you took that leap, and you knew you had what it took?
Christian Arnold:
Yeah, goodness, that's a lot that goes into that. I'm a big fan of Paul Graham from Y Combinator, and he uses this term relentlessly resourceful, and I love that. And we've tried to apply that, just try to be relentless. It's in our mission statement. It's one of the things that we just try to figure out how to support our clients. And we knew that if we do what we say we're going to do, and treat them right and build trust and respect with them, that everything else takes care of itself. So that was kind of the path that we started on very early, very personal. And then we just try to instill that with the whole team just to make sure that we can build that trust, because people are giving us millions of dollars to build these projects, establishing that trust early on so that we're going to be a good steward of that investment. How do we use design leverage that a lot of companies can do good design, but then they miss the schedule, or they miss the budget.
And so we try to focus on a holistic approach and deliver really cool looking stuff, but stuff that is on time, and on budget. And that's a challenge more so now than ever. And I think that's how we build that trust, and it just grows organically.
Kelly Scanlon:
So tell us about some of these cool projects. What are some that our listeners might recognize?
Christian Arnold:
One of the craziest and largest projects that we worked on was the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada. I think it's one of, still might be one of the largest buildings in the world. We were brought in, not a typical design project for us, very unusual. They were behind schedule with a model three production, and they brought us in to help get the project back on schedule. So very unique experience. Locally, just lots of great local companies. Done work for The Royals, Barclay, BMB theaters, VML. We do a lot of multifamily work, so we converted the old Commerce bank building into the Flash Cube apartments. We're converting the AT&T building into apartments. So that's a growing sector for us, is these office building conversions to apartments. That's probably a whole nother episode. And then we do fun ones like Char Bar, Meat Mitch, Serve, Bar K, just kind of unusual, quirky stuff like that. So just a wide variety.
Kelly Scanlon:
So you do some industrial, you do some multifamily,
Christian Arnold:
A little bit of everything. Very little industrial, actually. The Tesla one was an anomaly, but I think that one was because we were known for hitting deadlines. And so they came to us and said, hey, here's this crazy project. It was us and one other company in the country that were competing for it. Maybe showed who the crazy ones were. But that's the entrepreneurial spirit is that you have to take those risks, and you have to be bold, and you have to go after things that you really don't have the right to go after. And we won. So sometimes that pays off.
Kelly Scanlon:
And I know one of the organizations that you've been involved with for quite some time is EO, or as some people know it as the Entrepreneur's Organization. What did your participation in EO, how did that factor into the success of yourself as an entrepreneur, but also in Clockwork's growth?
Christian Arnold:
And maybe this is just an anomaly or unique to me, but I felt like as an entrepreneur, coming from a technical background, that I was on an island. I mean, you kind of mentioned it earlier, but I didn't know how to run a company. I'd never done that. And so it really provided the framework and the leadership opportunities. I joined the board pretty early on, and so that kind of taught me to grow and become a leader within a nonprofit organization. And then how do I learn from the best companies in the world, and apply those lessons back to our company here in Kansas City. There's a saying, we don't rise to the level of our expectations, but we fall to the level of our training or something like that. I'm very good at butchering quotes, but it's kind of that idea, where we need to have a framework.
And a couple of examples, I learned from one EO member the value of creating a dashboard. So every Monday morning we meet with a team, and we track five or six different broad-reaching elements within the companies. And that's kind of unusual for an architecture firm in my experience. So we look at things like operations and design and marketing and finance, but we also look at wellness and getting back to why we started the company, making sure that we maintain that balance, and that we don't forget why we went out on a limb to do this. And so we look at things like just quality of life, treating each other fairly, valuing life, and then how can we use our time and talent and treasure to help our community. So we do a ton of non-profit work, but we also started this cool thing a few years ago. It's our one for one program where every project that we do, we fund a well in Africa.
Kelly Scanlon:
Oh, really? Okay. So tell me about that. How does that work?
Christian Arnold:
It's very simple. Just wanted to come up with some way for us to reach out to the world and make an impact. I think a lot of people are searching for meaning in life, and so if we can just do some little thing like that. So it was a group that I had met through EO, and they build water wells in Africa, and they go, and they teach the local people there, how to do it, how to maintain it, and one well provides quality, clean life, giving water for years and years and years. So we average about 50 to 70 projects a year. So that's how many wells each year we funded. They send us a report every year, which is cool, and everybody gets excited in the office about where did we build wells this year. So it's just really rewarding.
I think we've served maybe 10, 15,000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa, and then we try to make it local too. We do a lot of work with Operation Breakthrough and Halo and Women's Employment Network, and there's just so many kinds of homegrown groups here. I mean, who doesn't want to support them, so.
Kelly Scanlon:
EO, you mentioned that you're on the board. I know you're very passionate about the power of that organization, and the value that it delivers for entrepreneurs. So who does it serve, specifically? Any entrepreneur? Do you have qualifications? How's it structured? What are its programs, activities, that kind of thing?
Christian Arnold:
The tagline is this, it's a peer-to-peer network. It's, I think, a little over 17,000 global members now. 200 and some chapters in 60 countries. So it's international, but then it's also local. There's a local Kansas City chapter. And so we meet on a monthly basis. We bring in learning events. It's structured. I mean, to be candid, Kansas City is blessed with some great organizations.
Kelly Scanlon:
Absolutely.
Christian Arnold:
YPO and EE and Vistage and HEMP. And I think the challenge is always just finding one that's right for you at the right time in your life. It's a group that's consists of owners and founders. The qualification is that you're a growing company with a million in revenue. A lot of chapters in the world have higher thresholds, but we saw kind of an unserved need here to keep that low, to help companies get through that. The no man's land of the one to 5 million range.
So every month we get together with other business owners and peers, it's called the Forum. It's a lot of just going through and making sure you're well-rounded personally, your business, your community, emotionally, spiritually. It's kind of touches on a lot of different things. And we all have highs and lows. And from my experience, it's been a great way to establish a baseline, because some months you're going to be just on fire, things are going great, top of the world, what could ever possibly go wrong? And then next month you're like, why am I doing this? I want out. This is terrible. And so it's just these highs and lows. When you reflect month to month on where you've come from, you can see, okay, I'm failing here, so I need to work on this, or I'm doing really good here, so I'm going to let off that and go there.
That's just how I approach it. For me, spirituality has been a big thing that I've grown with over the years. My faith is very important to me, and I think a lot of people struggle with that, because you're just focused on your business. And if that's not enough, then it's your family, and that's not enough. So usually most entrepreneurs I know, they take care of themselves last. So yeah, I took a saying, and I brought it into the company that you can't serve from an empty vessel. And there are many times throughout my entrepreneurial journey where I felt empty. And so I had to learn, how do I fill that back up? How do I keep myself together, because other people rely on me? And so figuring out what are those things that I can always come back to. And for me, it's faith and family. Those are the ones that ring true.
Kelly Scanlon:
So the Forum, which you're the chair of that part of EO, right?
Christian Arnold:
I'm not the chair right now. Previously, I've been the president. I'm setting up a president's council right now, but every business owner takes a turn being the chair of that forum. But I have in the past.
Kelly Scanlon:
So you have been there. And really that forum then is it kind of holds you accountable for balance, I guess you could say. It forces you to take that in the midst of all of the hustle and bustle, whether it's for good reasons or not so good reasons, as you just described, whether it's a high or low, it forces you to kind of go up 30,000 feet, look down at the year as a whole, and it just helps you to stay level, some steadiness.
Christian Arnold:
It's a safe environment. It's confidential. You can open up, you can share what you wouldn't share with the public, a friend, your neighbor, to share experiences that you've had that might help that person that you're hearing. And so it's a mini advisory board, and you're providing that 30,000 foot view, like you mentioned, how that person dealt with something, whether it was a legal issue, or an HR issue, or whatever thing comes up. Usually another entrepreneur in that group has experienced it. And one of the cool things about being the chair of the forum is that you're learning how to lead other leaders.
Kelly Scanlon:
True.
Christian Arnold:
And that's hard.
Kelly Scanlon:
It is. Yes.
Christian Arnold:
And if you can kind of wrangle those entrepreneurs and provide some guidance and focus to them, think about what you can do back with your team, so it's this kind of level up that happens of each different leadership trait.
Kelly Scanlon:
You mentioned that Kansas City is really rich in resources for entrepreneurs. Why do you think there is so much emphasis on entrepreneurship in Kansas City? I mean, how important are they to the future of Kansas City?
Christian Arnold:
Yeah. I think a lot of it goes back to just some of our entrepreneurial founders, the Kauffman Foundation, the work that Cliff Illig and Neal Patterson did in getting EE going. I think it's kind of just that Midwest work hard and treat each other and take care of each other. People are seeking meaning and purpose, I believe. And I think a lot of times it takes an entrepreneur to kind of go out on a limb, do something crazy, and try to shake things up and put it all on the line, see what happens. And hopefully that is a great way to build our community and make it stronger.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah. Transform an industry, transform a community. You just don't know. Right? Well, Christian, thank you so much for shaking things up, taking that entrepreneurial leap, and being our guest today. We really appreciate it.
Christian Arnold:
Thank you so much.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Christian Arnold for being our guest on this episode of Banking on KC. Entrepreneurs often start their companies because they believe they have a better way of producing a product, offering a service, or as Christian points out, building a culture that respects associates and clients. Christian even includes Clockworks culture and wellness as a KPI that's reviewed weekly on the company dashboard. He and his team track it to ensure they are treating one another fairly, considering quality of life issues, and giving of time, talent, and treasure to the broader community. Remember, plenty of people talk about doing things, but what you track and fund is what gets done. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on Kansas City, Country Club Bank, member FDIC.