Meet Rion Willard, the architect who walked away from the drawing board and stepped straight into the fault lines of his own profession, determined to rewrite its rules from the inside out. Today, he stands as Director of Consulting and Business Transformation at Business of Architecture, a coach to hundreds of firm owners, and the architect behind a business system that has helped practices double revenue, cut working hours in half, and regain control of their futures.
From Overworked Architect to Reluctant Business Student
Rion's story begins in the studios of Chelsea School of Art and The Bartlett, where he trained first as an artist and then as an architect, completing both his BSc and DipArch at UCL before earning his RIBA Part 3 at Cambridge. He entered practice through the doors of Grimshaw and RSHP, two of the most respected firms in the world, absorbing the rigor of high-profile work while quietly tracking a persistent pattern: brilliant designers burned out, underpaid, and unsure how their firms truly made money.
That tension followed him into his own venture, The Thinking Hand Studio, where he discovered that creative vision alone could not pay staff, rent, or tax bills. The pressure forced a decision: either accept the profession's financial chaos as a given, or dissect business models with the same intensity he once reserved for plans and sections. He chose dissection, diving into finance, sales, and leadership models, and then stress-testing them on real projects until patterns emerged about what made small and mid-sized practices thrive while others quietly folded.
Building the SMART Practice Method®
Out of that period of inquiry came his partnership with Enoch Sears and the co-creation of Business of Architecture, now a global platform that reaches firm leaders in more than 50 countries through education programs, consulting, and one of the world's leading AEC business podcasts. Their flagship business system, the SMART Practice Method®, offers a structured approach for architects to redesign their firms around profit, leadership clarity, and strategic operations rather than constant firefighting.
Hundreds of firms have now adopted the framework, reporting outcomes that run counter to the profession's usual gloom. Practices have doubled revenue within a few years, raised fees with confidence, and reduced working hours by up to 50 percent while growing team stability and client satisfaction. Rion's coaching clients describe moving from 70-hour weeks and erratic cash flow to focused leadership, strong pipelines, and business models that support both creative ambition and personal lives.
"Architects are trained to solve impossible problems for their clients," Rion has said in interviews, "yet many have never been shown how to solve the equally complex problem of their own business." That friction between creative mastery and commercial uncertainty is where his work hits hardest, giving owners practical tools to reframe pricing, restructure teams, and build recurring revenue instead of relying on one-off projects.
A Global Voice on the Business of Architecture
Through the Business of Architecture podcast, which has surpassed 2.1 million downloads and now ranks in the top 1 percent of shows globally, Rion has transformed long-form conversations into a classroom for the profession. He has interviewed hundreds of architects, developers, and AEC leaders, breaking down how they price, hire, negotiate, and scale, then translating those lessons into programs that his consulting clients can apply within their own studios. The YouTube channel has grown past 110,000 subscribers, a signal that architects worldwide crave strategic, financial, and leadership knowledge as much as they crave design inspiration.
His authority does not rest solely on podcast metrics. Rion has authored pieces in Architecture Today and Matzine and has been quoted in outlets such as Forbes and Monograph, where his arguments about leadership, fees, and the future of practice reach audiences far beyond his client base. His bylined article, "Architects Are Not Trained to Lead—But They Must Learn If They Want to Survive," has circulated widely among firm principals who see their own struggles in his diagnosis of a profession that underprices itself while carrying immense responsibility. "If architects do not claim leadership in business," he has argued, "someone else will shape the terms under which they work."
That message has taken him to stages at the Royal Institute of British Architects, AIA Atlanta, and AIA Austin, where he delivers talks on leadership, strategy, and profitability for architects navigating volatile markets. He has served as a judge for the Surface Design Show and as an advisor to the RIBA Presidential Taskforce on Workplace and Wellbeing, roles that signal trust from institutions that rarely hand influence to business coaches without deep professional roots.
Redefining What Success Looks Like for Architects
Client results give the clearest picture of his impact. Firms guided through the SMART Practice Method® report moving from thin margins to robust profitability, winning better projects with fewer proposals, and gaining the confidence to raise fees by 20 to 50 percent without losing their best clients. Several practices that once hovered on the edge of insolvency now operate with stable cash reserves, clear leadership structures, and strategic pipelines that support long-term hiring rather than short-term emergency recruitment.
Those outcomes matter in a broader context, where architecture billings have declined in many markets, and numerous firms struggle just to keep their staff employed. Rion's work offers an alternative path: treating business literacy as a core professional skill, providing architects with clear decision-making systems, and measuring success by both design quality and financial health. His coaching of more than 300 firm owners, along with the adoption of his methods by hundreds of practices across continents, has begun to influence how the next generation of leaders discusses fees, value, and the architect's role in shaping projects from the earliest strategic stages.
Along the way, he has helped raise the profile and reach of Business of Architecture itself, transforming what began as a podcast into a recognized global platform with education programs, consulting services, and a content library that many architects now consider essential for professional development. The thread running through his career—from his early days at Grimshaw and RSHP, through his own practice, to his current role—is a single, insistent question: what happens when architects master the business of their craft with the same intensity they bring to design? The answer, visible in the firms that have doubled their revenue, reclaimed their time, and raised their sights, is beginning to reshape how the profession discusses power, value, and leadership.
