What Design Gets Wrong About $$$ -After 40 Years- Charles Stone, Past President, IALD - FMS Founder

Summary

LytePod Episode Summary:
"What Design Gets Wrong About $$$ -After 40 Years- Charles Stone, Past President, IALD - FMS Founder"
Date: June 16, 2026 | Host: Lytei | Guest: Charles Stone

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Episode Overview

This episode of LytePod dives into the “honest, creative, challenging, and fun human part of how design really happens”—specifically, what the design world, and particularly lighting design, gets wrong (and right) about money after four decades of practice. Host Lytei sits down with Charles Stone (Past President, IALD; FMS Founder), blending hard-won lessons, entertaining anecdotes, and pragmatic advice, to unpack what creatives sell, how they value their work, and how to navigate the perennial tension between artistry, risk, and making a living.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Creativity vs. Financial Pragmatism

• Designers get into the field for the love of creativity and making spaces beautiful, not for the money. But survival as a professional means not ignoring the financial side.
• Memorable quote:

  “We're not thinking about the money, we're trying to make it beautiful. The last thing on the committed designer's mind is money.”
  — Charles Stone & Paul Morantz, (00:00–00:41)

2. Dangerous Phrases in the Design Studio

• Charles identifies two harmful phrases: “I just want to pick your brain,” and “We have to do it for the good of the project.”
• These attitudes, often client-driven, can “infect the office like a little virus,” leading to uncompensated work and scope creep.
• Quote:

  “They never offer to pay when they pick your brain. I always picture myself as a dead animal with carrion birds picking away.”
  — Charles Stone, (02:20–02:39)

3. Blurring of Scope & The Scope Creep Dilemma

• “Scope creep or lack of discipline” is highlighted as a major business risk—often worsened by a lack of contract awareness among young professionals.
• Charles insists his office requires all designers to read project contracts to avoid confusion and protect against unpaid extra work.
• Quote:

  “You can't spend your whole day worrying about risk.”
  — Charles Stone, (00:32)

• Key segment: (05:32–06:31): On learning the importance of business basics from early mentors and personal upbringing.

4. Contracts: Value and Limitations

• The function of contracts has shifted over decades. Once, unsigned proposals sufficed—today, bureaucracy often makes even signed contracts hard to achieve before work begins.
• The contract’s value lies less in enforceability and more in clarifying scope for the whole team, especially junior staff.
• Memorable moment:

  “Now, oh, nobody starts work ‘til they have a signed contract. Except they do, because you can’t get the signed contract!”
  — Charles Stone, (11:39–12:05)

5. What Clients Are Really Buying: ‘Magic’

• Charles reframes the exchange—not as drawings or documents, but as “magic”, the artistic and technical knowledge that creates a ‘wow’ moment for clients.
• Quote:

  “Ultimately, what the client is buying from us and what we are selling is magic.”
  — Charles Stone, (16:06)

• The payoff is client delight at the reveal, not just checklist deliverables.

6. Valuing Experience, Not Just Billable Hours

• Experience may earn a “premium,” but it’s limited compared to the blunt force of pricing pressures on large jobs. Many clients care more about price than expertise.
• Quote:

  “They have three prices… and they'll always pick the cheapest and we're almost never the cheapest.”
  — Charles Stone, (18:05)

7. Risk Management: The Unseen Core Skill

• Charles’s greatest ongoing value is identifying and managing risks—be it project disputes, safety, or business operations.
• Example anecdotes:
  • Standing firm on safety (e.g., lighting for public steps) even if it costs the project or client, to protect both company and public (27:05–31:04).
  • Risk isn't solely about insurance or liability, but guiding client decisions for the good of all.

8. Persistent, Principled Advocacy

• Success hinges on “persistence”—standing ground when necessary but remaining diplomatic so as not to “piss people off too much” (31:22).
• Winning arguments often involves getting the right stakeholders in the room.

9. Non-payment and Professional Boundaries

• Charles bluntly refuses speculative or “work for free now, pay you later” arrangements.
• Quote:

  “We don't work that way... We pay our people every week… So that doesn't, that's not our business model. I just dismiss all that as childishness.”
  — Charles Stone, (32:22–32:44)

10. Smart Spending: Tools, Tech, and Time

• Investing in up-to-date computers and monitors is a “no-brainer” for efficiency—every upgraded monitor essentially pays for itself within six months, yet many managers “don’t know where to spend.”
• Quote:

  “The dumbest thing people do with money is not spend it properly.”
  — Charles Stone, (37:36)

11. Mentorship Through Process and Risk Awareness

• Mentoring isn’t just about technical design but about focusing effort, reducing wasted time (not “studying 20 options”), and embedding risk awareness.
• Quote:

  “If you’re studying more than [four or five options], you haven’t applied the senior experience level to the problem properly… you're going to waste time and money and effort and perhaps joy studying bullshit.”
  — Charles Stone, (39:20)

12. Does Everyone in Design Need Business Acumen?

• Not really, Charles says. Project managers and leadership need a sense of costs and risks, but the critical requirement is clarity about what’s been agreed to for the client.
• Quote:

  “No one needs to know about the money, really…Primary is figuring out what you’ve agreed to do for the client and get it done efficiently.”
  — Charles Stone, (42:31–43:02)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “You can’t call [the landlord] and say, ‘for the good of the project, I can’t pay you this month.’”
  — Charles Stone, (04:02)
• “If you keep banging your head against the wall and it hurts, stop banging your head against the wall.”
  — Charles Stone, (06:41)
• “Persistence is good.”
  — Charles Stone, (43:10)
• “You fritter your life away getting nowhere… you have to rationalize the process or you can’t make any money.”
  — Charles Stone, (40:42)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:00–00:46: Philosophical opening, artistry versus money
• 02:18–03:22: The harm in “pick your brain” and “for the good of the project”
• 05:32–06:31: Learning business basics from mentors and family
• 10:00–10:16: “Read the contract!” office mandate
• 12:23–13:23: Importance (and limitations) of contracts in the current era
• 16:06–16:21: Clients really buy “magic”
• 27:05–31:04: Risk management through real project anecdotes
• 32:22–32:44: Rejection of speculative/free work
• 37:36–38:16: “Dumbest money mistake”: Not spending on efficiency
• 39:20–40:42: Mentoring via risk assessment and focusing on viable options
• 42:31–43:02: Only some need to “know the money”; business basics for creatives

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Conclusion:

Charles Stone’s primary lesson: Artistic integrity and love of design must coexist with a practical, sometimes “old-school” but clear-eyed embrace of contracts, risk assessment, and value-driven resource management. The most rewarding moments are still when the client says “wow”—but you only reach those by holding your ground, knowing what your service is worth, and rationalizing your process so you “don’t fritter your life away getting nowhere.”

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Tone:
Conversational, blunt, witty, and infused with decades of practical wisdom.

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“Take some risk. Be persistent.”
— Closing exchange between Interviewer and Charles Stone, (43:06–43:13)

Transcript

[Charles Stone]

We're not thinking about the money, we're

[Paul Morantz]

trying to make it beautiful. The last thing on the committed designer's

[Interviewer]

mind is I've listened to Charles Stone talk about lighting for a long time and I'm sure you have too. But I keep replaying this one. It's his wisdom and it's not in a bottle anymore.

[Charles Stone]

Ultimately, what the client is buying from us and what we are selling is

[Paul Morantz]

magic, artistic and technical knowledge, which is what the client actually needs and wants. And yet we have to spend all this time doing all the other stuff. You have to rationalize the process or you can't make any money.

[Charles Stone]

You can't spend your whole day worrying about risk.

[Paul Morantz]

That's risk management. Down at the one on one level with a 25 year old, it's unusual

[Charles Stone]

for that young architect to have read the contract.

[Paul Morantz]

But that's not really about money. How do you know what you're going to do if you don't read the contract?

[Charles Stone]

But that's not primary. Primary is figuring out.

[Interviewer]

Before we jump in, I want to

[Sponsor Representative]

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[Interviewer]

it's obvious, but I just have to ask, do you like to get paid to do what you do? Yeah, I mean, inevitably, right?

[Paul Morantz]

Well, it's a business.

[Charles Stone]

There are two expressions I prefer not to ever hear. One of them is I'm just calling to pick your brain. They never offer to pay when they pick your brain. And I always picture myself as a dead animal with carrying birds picking away. You know that's really rude when they

[Paul Morantz]

call you to pick your brain. Now the other thing that I don't

[Charles Stone]

prefer to hear the young designers especially,

[Paul Morantz]

or anybody say in our design studios is, oh, we have to do it for the good of the job, for the good of the project.

[Charles Stone]

Actually, usually the client says that, well, are we going to redesign the studio

[Paul Morantz]

or the, you know, classrooms?

[Charles Stone]

Yeah, we have to redesign the classrooms. We'll give you the new layouts. So we have to redo the lighting. Oh, yeah, everybody has to redo their work. Okay, well, do we have an additional service number for this? How are you guys handling it? Oh, well, we're just doing it because it has to be done for the

[Paul Morantz]

good of the project. So those are the two things called

[Charles Stone]

to pick your brain, and we have to do it for the good of the project.

[Interviewer]

Those phrases come from somewhere, right?

[Paul Morantz]

Well, in these cases, they came from the client, but then they come into.

[Charles Stone]

They infect the office like a little virus. Of course, that's the root of this problem, because everybody who gets invested in the creative enterprise, we're not thinking about the money.

[Paul Morantz]

We're trying to make it beautiful.

[Charles Stone]

So when something has to be done

[Paul Morantz]

to make it, to maintain the integrity

[Charles Stone]

of concept or

[Paul Morantz]

move with the shifting sands of the design, the last thing on the committed designer's mind is money. So this is all, some of it

[Charles Stone]

is born of innocence and goodwill. What I don't like to see is when we or anyone is taken advantage of, because after all, the landlord of the young designers in the office expects the rent on time. So you can't call them up and say, well, for the good of the project, I can't pay you this month. And that's the dilemma. So where does it come from?

[Paul Morantz]

Well, I guess it comes from attitudes that get created in a project, any project.

[Charles Stone]

I wouldn't want to put the blame on the owner or the developer or even the designers.

[Interviewer]

I mean, guilty as charged. It's so easy to, as a creative, never be done and try to polish it a little bit more.

[Paul Morantz]

Never be done is not the problem. Everybody thinks it is. What the problem is is, well, we painted this room, why don't we paint that room too? We're here.

[Charles Stone]

That's the problem.

[Paul Morantz]

When you take on scope, it's really not a problem. They all complain about, oh, the job

[Charles Stone]

keeps changing, it keeps going, oh, yeah,

[Paul Morantz]

and that's a problem. But it's not as big a problem as, call it scope creep, or call it lack of discipline.

[Charles Stone]

And I don't mean just internally at our office, I mean the whole project team.

[Paul Morantz]

Sure, it's extremely unusual for the young

[Charles Stone]

architect who is directing our young Lighting designer. It's unusual for that young architect to have read the contract.

[Interviewer]

What did you do to figure this out?

[Paul Morantz]

Well, nobody. That's why Paul Morantz.

[Charles Stone]

And if you're listening to this and watching this, of course, Paul passed away in May of 2025, and he was

[Paul Morantz]

still coming into the office, you know,

[Charles Stone]

literally days before, and he was still mentoring people six decades younger and having a good time. So his passing was sudden and we miss him. But of course, he was my boss, teacher, mentor for a long time. I think some of it comes from my upbringing. Maybe my family had businesses and I learned it's not like they had class

[Paul Morantz]

at the kitchen table, but there was conversation I could hear and they didn't. My dad didn't talk a lot about business, but occasionally you hear stuff, and

[Charles Stone]

I guess that sinks in over a childhood.

[Interviewer]

So to you it's obvious, you know,

[Paul Morantz]

so I wouldn't say obvious.

[Sponsor Representative]

It's not

[Interviewer]

what is it?

[Paul Morantz]

But if you keep banging your head

[Charles Stone]

against the wall and it hurts, stop banging your head against the wall.

[Paul Morantz]

So if it, if you keep losing, if you keep coming up in the red, losing money on doing jobs a certain way, well, maybe you're doing them wrong. Because if someone else, some other company

[Charles Stone]

is doing them and hap. Smiling and making money doing it, or

[Paul Morantz]

at least making a little money, then why are we doing it wrong? So there's a whole, you know, it's not like other professions in many ways. And for example, lawyers have the law, and then they go to law school and they learn how to practice law.

[Charles Stone]

And of course, I'm sure different practices are different state to state and town to town and neighbor to neighbor.

[Paul Morantz]

However, lawyers do a whole set of things. Lighting designers, all the different people and firms here at this conference, I would be willing to bet people do things

[Charles Stone]

all kinds of different ways in the way they provide the product, what services

[Paul Morantz]

they say they're selling, what services they

[Charles Stone]

actually provide, what the work product looks like, how much time they put into it. I think there's no standardization at all. So if they want to pay you a million dollars to do a job and another guy's willing to do it for $10,000 and he's happy to do

[Paul Morantz]

it for 10,000, I want to hire

[Charles Stone]

the guy for 10,000, I'll pay him 11 and keep the balance. So what I'm getting at is it's

[Paul Morantz]

really complicated to be.

[Charles Stone]

To be critical about your work process because you don't really know what your competition's doing.

[Interviewer]

So you kind of have to Stick to your guns of what you have and what you do.

[Charles Stone]

That's what we did. That was our thing. We decided, okay, this is what it takes to do a level of quality.

[Paul Morantz]

And one of the big challenges we're having now is with the arrival of,

[Charles Stone]

well, I don't see AI

[Paul Morantz]

it's certainly

[Charles Stone]

in the renderings and the work that's being produced by the architect. It's certainly embedded in some of the software we're using. But now in the world of models, where we're expected to have enough competent staff to handle the models,

[Paul Morantz]

that's pretty far from the real business of looking around like this little setup you have

[Charles Stone]

and seeing, okay, key and fill and color, temperature and how much is here and how much is there. The actual artistic and technical knowledge, which

[Paul Morantz]

is what the client actually needs and wants. And yet we have to spend all this time doing all the other stuff. I don't think there's any escape from that.

[Charles Stone]

But

[Paul Morantz]

you have to keep all that in mind.

[Charles Stone]

If you're going to critique how your firm is operating, how much time is being spent on all these activities across all the projects, then maybe we can go to somebody's desk and complain about them, because they don't set out to

[Paul Morantz]

do a bad job. They come to work to do a good job. Well, they used to come to work.

[Charles Stone]

Now they turn their machine on.

[Interviewer]

Obviously, there's a contract for you to do the project.

[Charles Stone]

Well, our designers read it.

[Interviewer]

They are. They do.

[Charles Stone]

They don't read it. They can't work for it. In our office, that's real straightforward. You don't have to read it. You just can't work here if you don't read it, because how would you know what to work on?

[Interviewer]

So the people that work in your office read every project?

[Charles Stone]

Absolutely.

[Paul Morantz]

How else would they know what they're doing? I mean, that's the kind of obvious, but is that one of the secrets? Is that a secret?

[Charles Stone]

I don't think it's a secret.

[Paul Morantz]

It's just, well, if you don't do

[Charles Stone]

that, what do you just make it up?

[Paul Morantz]

But there's. But you raise it.

[Charles Stone]

You remind me of something that I

[Paul Morantz]

wanted to tell you about, which is when I started, when I went to work for Paul, it was 1983, and even before that, when I worked for Claude Engel down in Washington, we would send out a proposal and it would

[Charles Stone]

never come back signed, but we would

[Paul Morantz]

start to work and do the job and get paid. People didn't sign contracts back then for

[Charles Stone]

little consultancies like ours.

[Paul Morantz]

And once in a while, if there was a problem, the guy didn't send the money, you call him up and you know, how do you want to handle this? You haven't been paying us. What do you want to do? I think that means you don't want

[Charles Stone]

us to work for you. Is that right? You know, just have a frank conversation.

[Paul Morantz]

But when there weren't signed contracts, that's

[Charles Stone]

the point I'm making.

[Paul Morantz]

They weren't signed. Even big jobs, you can't even imagine that.

[Interviewer]

No, absolutely not.

[Charles Stone]

That's right.

[Paul Morantz]

You can't even imagine it. And that's not that long ago. I don't think 40 years is so long ago.

[Charles Stone]

So now, oh, nobody starts work till

[Paul Morantz]

they have a signed contract. Except they do, because you can't get the signed contract. Because the bureaucracies in some cases are so large that they can't sign a contract.

[Charles Stone]

Nobody's able to sign it in the chain of bureaucrats. And then they want you to go to work. So you have to figure out what to do with that problem.

[Interviewer]

So what do you do when a contract comes in? First of all, let me back up one more boring but very important question about a contract. In the world today that we live in, why is it important? Why does it actually matter?

[Paul Morantz]

Long before you have a contract, you need a client.

[Charles Stone]

So. And if you trust the client and know the client, you're probably going to have an understanding of what the work

[Paul Morantz]

is and you're probably going to get paid.

[Charles Stone]

So the contract's just paper. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't get contracts, but I think we've overstated their importance in one sense.

[Paul Morantz]

On the other hand, now what's really useful is then you can give that paper to the young designers and say, here, read this. Because this is what we're hired to do. We are not hired to wash his

[Charles Stone]

car or paint the rooms not mentioned

[Paul Morantz]

or do the things. If it's not in there, then we're not hired to do it. That doesn't mean we won't do it or couldn't do it. It doesn't even mean we would charge you to do it. But you didn't tell us you wanted to do it. We didn't agree in that sense. Of course, a written understanding is just common sense. Why wouldn't you do that personally?

[Interviewer]

Or how do you like to teach it in your studio? To say, well, I'm sorry, everyone's different.

[Charles Stone]

Yeah, every project is different.

[Interviewer]

So do you read the room?

[Charles Stone]

Yeah, you read the room?

[Paul Morantz]

Well, we have one Right now. We have a project right now that

[Charles Stone]

has a written contract, which we had agreed.

[Paul Morantz]

It's with a bureaucracy, so we had

[Charles Stone]

to write it all down.

[Paul Morantz]

But it became very clear to me in the first few months that what we wrote down is not what they need. They needed something else. So we are doing the something else. Well, that just freaked out some of my colleagues because I didn't want to write another contract to them. I didn't want to say here, this is changing.

[Charles Stone]

You didn't want this. Give that back to me. We'll write it again. Because it's more dynamic than that. So that's just experience. And I could be. I think it'll work out just fine. And they seem to be pretty happy. But it does happen that way, too.

[Paul Morantz]

What we actually agreed to, they don't

[Charles Stone]

want any of that.

[Paul Morantz]

You have to pay attention to hold

[Charles Stone]

on to the concept and make sure everybody understands that they hired us to

[Paul Morantz]

hold on to the concept and get

[Charles Stone]

it done right, really push it. That's how you get those good jobs, the beautiful pictures.

[Interviewer]

You've put me right where I want to be with what's on my mind right now. And that's not what they pay you money. It's what do they pay you for?

[Paul Morantz]

Very good question. I don't know, because I think it's even changed in the 40 years. Well, there's work product. Okay, what is it that is physical that they can put in the car

[Charles Stone]

and drive away with? You know, is it a disc or drawings? Is it specifications? Is it renderings? So that's work product. Or if you go and adjust the lights, is it a record of that activity? I guess that's what they're buying. Technically, that's the exchange of goods and services for money.

[Paul Morantz]

And, yes, it's important to keep your eye on that. I'm sure every single consultant here at this convention conference, I should say, is

[Charles Stone]

very mindful of that. I decided that what we sell is magic.

[Paul Morantz]

And although we didn't really attempt or

[Charles Stone]

even mean to trade market, I used to. I've written this and said it before.

[Paul Morantz]

You know what you want. What do you want to teach the young designers?

[Charles Stone]

Is that ultimately what the client is buying from us and what we are selling is magic. They want to be wowed.

[Paul Morantz]

And that is not always true, but it is so often true. Maybe. Maybe more than half, maybe two thirds

[Charles Stone]

of the projects, it's that moment when it's finished and in, the lights are adjusted and the paint's dry, that the client is standing with you.

[Paul Morantz]

And they say, wow, this is great. Sometimes a classy high class architect takes

[Charles Stone]

the time to write a note when they really do appreciate what you've done for them.

[Paul Morantz]

So that's what we're selling.

[Interviewer]

That moment, that appreciation, that moment when

[Paul Morantz]

they realized they got something with us they could not have gotten without us.

[Interviewer]

There's a very real notion of, well, just because I spent 100 hours for you doesn't mean I haven't spent 10,000 learning before you to make sure that

[Sponsor Representative]

that hundred is that much better.

[Interviewer]

Do you have a mindset behind being able to value experience and more importantly, do your clients?

[Charles Stone]

I think that it gives us a little premium. Okay.

[Paul Morantz]

It's not very big. Okay. Because talk is cheap.

[Charles Stone]

You know, they all sit in a

[Paul Morantz]

room and let's say we're bidding on a really big job, really big, I think.

[Charles Stone]

Imagine yourself at the meeting when they

[Paul Morantz]

get the bureaucracy that

[Charles Stone]

generates the RFP

[Paul Morantz]

and receives the proposals from multiple bidders

[Charles Stone]

and we'll be one of them.

[Paul Morantz]

Maybe we're even the preferred bidder. Maybe they say, we kind of like to hire these guys. You better get some other bids to just check and just in case we

[Charles Stone]

change our mind or that's all rational. And so they'll have three prices,

[Paul Morantz]

probably

[Charles Stone]

not apples to apples, despite their, their attempts. In other words, what exclusions you may make when you make a proposal may not match up to the other guy. So that's, they say scurrying to the spreadsheets, trying to normalize. They have a word they use for that so that they're all apples to apples. And then they'll always pick the cheapest and we're almost never the cheapest. But what I have noticed over the years, you know the expression jumping the shark?

[Interviewer]

I've not heard that one.

[Paul Morantz]

Well, sometimes if people, if other consultants.

[Charles Stone]

Well, I'm talking about Worldwide now, not just in the US and the worldwide

[Paul Morantz]

for the big, the really big projects. When they find out we're on the.

[Charles Stone]

They guess or they find out that

[Paul Morantz]

we're one of the bidders, the other consultants will raise their numbers and I'll

[Charles Stone]

just like in a good sports play, I'll just run through the opening and we won't be the highest. Now there's nothing original about any of this. This is old school sales marketing, doing business. It's not even that interesting to me. But you have to get the work. If you don't have the work, then you don't have any need for employees. You don't have a lot of problems.

[Interviewer]

Can Someone run through the hole and start saying, no, pay for the value,

[Sponsor Representative]

not just the service.

[Charles Stone]

Well, that's what we keep trying to remind ourselves and our clients what it is that we do that no one else can do. And we're really talking about the client, too.

[Paul Morantz]

You guys, can't. You.

[Charles Stone]

The client can't evaluate lighting the way we can. That's why you need us.

[Paul Morantz]

It's dynamic.

[Charles Stone]

The situation is dynamic.

[Sponsor Representative 2]

For sure.

[Interviewer]

There's this value prop of lighting design, but then that. That goes upstream to architecture, who ultimately goes to the people with all the money.

[Sponsor Representative 2]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Do you. Do you have any sense of the world of architecture? Do they. Do they struggle with the same thing?

[Paul Morantz]

I'm sure they do.

[Charles Stone]

And I. I don't know if we finished this conversation. We started it last night looking at the sunset.

[Paul Morantz]

The.

[Charles Stone]

We have clients that are.

[Paul Morantz]

On this whole,

[Charles Stone]

it's a spectrum, if you will. At one end they know about lighting, at the other end they know nothing about lighting. And both ends hire lighting designers for different reasons, for different purposes. They want you to do different things. And I like working with all kinds of people, so sometimes it's great to be working with people who don't know anything at all about lighting, and sometimes they're really excited by the whole proposition. Sometimes it's not like that. But. So we've had every combination of that that you can game out. So that's. That's yet another variable. Is it more accepted, really? I don't know. When you walk around this resort and you will see there's nobody here taking lighting seriously, nobody on their internal team. I don't understand that. It's hospitality, but that's the way it is.

[Sponsor Representative 2]

Having the opportunity to engage with people in lighting design is one thing, but it's important to have partners in manufacturing, too. Kelvix doesn't just move fast, they move with purpose.

[Sponsor Representative]

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[Sponsor Representative 2]

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[Interviewer]

there's, there's a video you sent me a long time ago. The video is from Mike Montero. It was given at a conference 13 years ago and the title's fu pay me. Right? It's. It's got a lot of traction in action.

[Charles Stone]

Millions and millions of people have watched it.

[Interviewer]

You shared it with me four years ago and it's just fundamentally simple, right?

[Sponsor Representative 2]

He.

[Interviewer]

He breaks down what I'll call maybe more the legal and business side of what we're discussing here that you have

[Sponsor Representative 2]

a service

[Interviewer]

people value for basically one reason. You can get stuck caring about a whole lot of things, frankly they don't need or care about because you don't know what you don't know yet. Sometimes the train doesn't pull into the station and then there's problems, or it does and it's the wrong train, or it does and it's empty. I can go on and on with

[Sponsor Representative]

this silly little analogy, right?

[Interviewer]

But when you look at the landscape of, of what it means to

[Sponsor Representative 2]

put

[Interviewer]

the pen to paper on

[Sponsor Representative 2]

protecting yourself

[Interviewer]

from that, but then also having to course correct or take action on it. What's been your mentality behind that for decades?

[Charles Stone]

The RFPs we receive and the contracts will receive, in other words, they'll send us their form contain paragraphs I've written. So I had a lot to do in our office for years, early years, I was the one rewriting clauses to make it clear what we would do and to protect ourselves, but also to protect the client.

[Paul Morantz]

Just to make it clear what service we were providing and what we would do and wouldn't do. And these things got out in the industry.

[Charles Stone]

And I'm not the only one who would say this to you, but I see my paragraphs come back to me all the time from the owners now. So it's out there. Our proposal form is out there.

[Paul Morantz]

Lots.

[Charles Stone]

I won't say all, but there are a lot of significant nationwide architecture firms

[Paul Morantz]

that know what our service is and they don't hesitate to call us and

[Charles Stone]

put us on a project because they know what we're going to do.

[Paul Morantz]

Is it written down when they make that call? No.

[Interviewer]

Have you ever had to walk away from a project or a proposal that you wanted to be on?

[Paul Morantz]

Well, you wouldn't walk away if you wanted to be on it. You'd stay, would you? Yeah. If you didn't want to be on

[Charles Stone]

it anymore, then you walk away. But that's not the question you asked.

[Paul Morantz]

Not really. You know, there are a couple of

[Charles Stone]

times there have been some misunderstandings.

[Paul Morantz]

I can think of a. I can think of one in particular. I'm sorry this happened. We were very concerned about the light levels in the park, public park across

[Charles Stone]

from the courthouse in an American city.

[Paul Morantz]

And I said, we're going to have to put some bollards or pole lights or we need a couple of lights in here. There's steps and when the guy falls down the steps, if there's no light, we're all going to get in trouble. So it's my job to tell you, you got to put some light here. Well, no, we don't want to do that. We just want to light the trees. Uh huh. So eventually they stopped calling us because

[Charles Stone]

I wouldn't say, okay, we'll do it your way.

[Paul Morantz]

And I explained to them, I said, you know, I don't want to have a fight with you about this, but I can't do this because you're going to get. If you get in trouble and I get in trouble, it's my fault that you got in trouble. So he said, I know, we're just going to get in trouble. We're going to use our liability insurance

[Charles Stone]

if we get in trouble. I've heard that many times.

[Paul Morantz]

But in this particular one, they stopped calling. That ended our relationship. But for me, that was simple. It was risk.

[Charles Stone]

I was just doing a risk analysis and I decided the risk of a problem in that park was greater than

[Paul Morantz]

the risk the Risk to the company.

[Charles Stone]

Company first.

[Paul Morantz]

The risk to the company was greater

[Charles Stone]

than it was. If we lost the client, we could

[Paul Morantz]

survive losing the client. We couldn't survive the lawsuit for not

[Charles Stone]

lighting the stairs in the park.

[Interviewer]

How much do you feel like the word risk? The reality of risk plays in to the decisions you've made over time.

[Paul Morantz]

Well, Paul and Jules started the company in 1971 in Jules basement.

[Charles Stone]

So I guess we've balanced it pretty well. Yeah, you can't spend your whole day worrying about risk. You're going to take risk. But sometimes there's a clear cut decision to be made and risk is waving at you.

[Paul Morantz]

Consider me, consider me.

[Charles Stone]

And that's in that story I told about the park. That was it.

[Paul Morantz]

And there have been some other times. And usually I win the argument.

[Charles Stone]

That's the part that surprised me so much.

[Paul Morantz]

Usually I win. Usually they'll say, you know, we don't like you, we don't like your idea,

[Charles Stone]

but we're going to do it.

[Paul Morantz]

Could you compromise with this?

[Charles Stone]

I said, sure, you know, we don't like you, you know, we don't like you at all. But you're probably right about this. So we're going to. I had a couple of those, did one in Canada like that.

[Paul Morantz]

It was an exterior plaza. Same fight.

[Charles Stone]

Kind of might as well be the same fight. And some meeting in the facilities guy. Was there a high up facilities guy, like the vice president of facilities type guy. It was a bank. It was a bank. And they developed this brand new building and is a big plaza.

[Paul Morantz]

And the one thing about Canada you

[Charles Stone]

got to remember snow and ice. So people fall on steps. You have steps, you gotta light em.

[Paul Morantz]

And your architect's saying, well, we'll just

[Charles Stone]

light it from the inside of the building.

[Paul Morantz]

And I said I can't calculate that properly. And I also will have the light

[Charles Stone]

that's in the lobby will provide enough light.

[Paul Morantz]

And I said probably will. But I'm gonna have a lot of

[Charles Stone]

problem calculating that to my satisfaction.

[Paul Morantz]

And I mean this is not a

[Charles Stone]

sophomore class project, this is real life. So I have a lot of problem calculating that.

[Paul Morantz]

And what if it turned lights in

[Charles Stone]

the lobby off at night to save energy? Well, oil price goes up too high, something like that. So they had the big meeting and we had a solution.

[Paul Morantz]

And the facilities guy said, well, why are we having this meeting? Why don't we just do this solution that Charles has proposed? And that was the end of the problem. When I finally got to the right guy, he said, yeah, why don't we just do that.

[Interviewer]

My next question was, why do you win and how do you win and you just keep fighting for it.

[Paul Morantz]

We spoke about persistence and try not

[Charles Stone]

to piss people off too much.

[Paul Morantz]

And they can always fire us if they don't like it. So what have we got to lose? Just tell them the truth, tell them what we think. So I kind of behave, I do behave that way and it doesn't trouble me. So that means when you get into these and I'm pretty sure about, and I really looked at something and I get sure that we have the right design solution, I mean, sure I could be wrong, but are you sure you're not? Are you sure you're right? Because I think this is better. I'll push that all the way across

[Interviewer]

the room if I point back to this thing we call money. Money, money, money, money, money. What do you do when people don't pay you?

[Paul Morantz]

Why would you hire us if you don't want to pay us? Because we're a specialty. Sometimes people's business, their idea of business, you know, wouldn't you do a free one for me?

[Charles Stone]

Then we'll pay you the next job.

[Paul Morantz]

Yeah, I've heard that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Back to this whole like, you know, selling your opportunity costs.

[Paul Morantz]

Yeah, I've heard that a lot. I say, well, no, we don't work that way. We're not able to work that way because we pay our people every week. We don't tell them, work this week and then we'll pay you next week. We don't do it that way. So that doesn't, that's not our business model. I just dismiss all that as childishness. Childish? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So much of what you're describing, it's logical.

[Paul Morantz]

Well, just because you want. That's what happens, I think is that the so called lighting designer, he, he or she wants to do the job so badly that they lose sight of common sense.

[Charles Stone]

Yeah, I, I just, it's got to be that.

[Paul Morantz]

How else can you explain it? So I don't think there's anything we're doing that's remarkable in any way regarding

[Charles Stone]

the money side of it.

[Paul Morantz]

Although we've been in business a long time because now I have a cfo. He's the one that said, you know,

[Charles Stone]

you got to call these people, they owe you too much money. Or he would say, no, don't worry about the contract, go to work for those people. They've been good, they're good payers.

[Paul Morantz]

That's the kind of thing he would say. How do you know that? What do you mean? They're good payers. What does that even mean?

[Charles Stone]

So I had someone always at my

[Paul Morantz]

ear

[Charles Stone]

doing the evaluation. And so keep helping. Keeping the ship on track, keeping us on course.

[Paul Morantz]

You would say so that we weren't

[Charles Stone]

taking too much risk by getting receivables

[Paul Morantz]

that were too big. But I didn't have to worry about it. He worried about it.

[Sponsor Representative]

It's nice not to have to worry about risk. And that matters when you're specifying lights too. For almost a century, Targeti has shaped how people experience architecture using precision optics, performance, and that unmistakable sense of Italian design to elevate every moment a space offers. Because light isn't just seen, it's felt. It drives emotion, guides the eye and transforms intention into atmosphere. For Tarjeti, light isn't simply the medium, it's the identity. It's the craft, the legacy and the commitment behind every solution that they create. You should experience it for yourself.

[Sponsor Representative 2]

Visit tarjettiusa.com Most of the conversations I

[Charles Stone]

have with our new leadership can be boiled down to they want my opinion about risk now. Not necessarily money or legal or liability or design.

[Paul Morantz]

It could be personnel. It could be any of these things. It could be. It could be. Would you do, you know, would you do the LED XYZ this way, or would you do the LED ABC that way? Which one do you think will be easier to maintain or likely to stay in the drawings longer or get built the way we want it? You know, there'll be a. It's all about risk. So that's actually, and you put your finger on probably the value that I personally am bringing to our company is

[Charles Stone]

about identification of risk.

[Interviewer]

My last question on money, I'm curious, is it definitive? Is there a story or is it just something you heard? The dumbest thing anyone's ever done with money and design.

[Paul Morantz]

I'd always go around about every month, maybe for years, to everybody's desk. Are your monitors okay? Do you want another one? Some people, we are up to four

[Charles Stone]

monitors with some people, you know, do you. All the equipment work, the phone of

[Paul Morantz]

keyboard shit, all that every. Does it all work?

[Charles Stone]

Yes.

[Paul Morantz]

Something could be faster. Well, this is.

[Charles Stone]

I'd make a note, you know, and

[Paul Morantz]

we were always buying computers. I tried to buy them before they needed them. And there's a period of time where I'm certain. And I did the calculation once.

[Charles Stone]

This is my nerdy side. I mean, just flashed in my head, I realized, oh,

[Paul Morantz]

with multiple monitors, I'm making money. A monitor cost a few hundred dollars today. Same thing, right? $200, $400, some.

[Charles Stone]

Some number like that for a pretty good monitor, even if it was $1,000.

[Paul Morantz]

Anyway, how long does it take you to click? All right, how many clicks a second, a minute? How many clicks in a 1800 or

[Charles Stone]

2000 hour a year do you click,

[Paul Morantz]

add up the time and put it

[Charles Stone]

against the company hourly rate for that person.

[Paul Morantz]

And what you find is monitors pay back in six months. So I was buying monitors for people who didn't want them and making money on the. Every monitor we bought, we made money on the monitor. And I would explain it to anybody who wanted to know. I'd explain it to the youngest kid. I said, would you rather have a

[Charles Stone]

higher salary or would you rather have one monitor?

[Paul Morantz]

Because if you have two monitors, there'll be more money. Oh, so what's the dumbest thing people do with money is not spend it properly.

[Charles Stone]

That's probably the dumbest thing. They don't know where to spend.

[Paul Morantz]

If you think you're saving money by, oh, we can make it another six

[Charles Stone]

months with those computers that we have

[Paul Morantz]

already, then you're just being a fool. That's not really fair. Then you're not thinking it through. Because if you have 30 people, how long does your laptop last? Okay, 36 months. If you have 36 people in the office, that means you're buying a new computer every month. What that really means is if you're

[Charles Stone]

not buying a new computer every month,

[Paul Morantz]

you're behind, which means you haven't invested sufficiently in your business. I find the management of risk in

[Charles Stone]

the design practice to be a really

[Paul Morantz]

interesting challenge, because it's everything.

[Charles Stone]

When you. When you go to a young designer

[Paul Morantz]

and say, well, here's the problem we're

[Charles Stone]

going to solve,

[Paul Morantz]

I'll say, I think we should do it this way. But I'm not sure. I want you to study this and this and maybe some more of your ideas, too. How long will it take you? Okay, I'll see you this afternoon.

[Charles Stone]

So I go back in the afternoon now.

[Paul Morantz]

If he or she hasn't done the

[Charles Stone]

one I sketched out, they're in big trouble with me. That's a teachable moment. I explained to them.

[Paul Morantz]

So. No, no, you didn't understand. The instruction point here is that you don't want to study 20 options or even 10. You want to figure out the three or maybe four or five options. If you're studying more than that, then you haven't. The senior experience level hasn't been applied to the problem properly, so you're going to waste time and money and effort

[Charles Stone]

and perhaps joy studying bullshit.

[Paul Morantz]

When you should focus on the likely

[Charles Stone]

candidates, the possible candidates.

[Paul Morantz]

You show a client three options. They all have to work. You can't show them. Oh well these two don't work but we like them. No, that's amateur hour. You have to show them three options at work. So that's risk management down at the one on one level with a 25 year old. And I find that very interesting because I then I want to talk to them about. I like to bring the whole project down into each little problem. So I like to talk about. Here's the big concept of the whole project is why we're hired or why they called us and we're doing this and this is the look and this problem has to be solved because of this problem, because of this need. Now I want you to study this. I suggest some others and anything else you think? No more than say four options and then we'll meet this afternoon decide which maybe we'll sew client to. So you that's to me that's People say what? Design management. No, I don't think that's it. I think that's a process. You have to rationalize the process in my opinion or you can't make any money.

[Charles Stone]

You're just going to fritter your life away getting nowhere.

[Interviewer]

Do you think by teaching a young employee how to manage risk and that simple exercise is in its own way mentorship in training for growing with that mindset no matter what they do?

[Paul Morantz]

I do. Although I keep getting reports that the

[Charles Stone]

young designers now are. This is a really different generation. Yeah, I've heard that before. I'm not so intimidated by it and

[Paul Morantz]

I have a lot more patience for

[Charles Stone]

them than I've seen this movie before.

[Paul Morantz]

So there's ups and downs.

[Charles Stone]

There's like a sine wave of simpatico with the kids in their 20s and then it comes and goes a little bit.

[Paul Morantz]

So I got plenty of time for all this.

[Charles Stone]

These you know each successive group of 20 year olds.

[Interviewer]

How much does it matter that everybody knows about business?

[Paul Morantz]

Oh, it doesn't matter.

[Charles Stone]

What matters is that there are some practice.

[Paul Morantz]

We used to have the 10 little rules. I might have shared them with you at one point. They were things, as you recall.

[Charles Stone]

Put the date on every page you touch. That's back when we used paper. Put the date on every page you touch or you know, keep a journal. Obvious stuff. And I had a checking routine that was near and dear to me. I felt that our error checking protocol really set us aside from everyone else. So my point there is none of that was really about money. It did say read the contract. One of the rules was read the contract but that's not really about money.

[Paul Morantz]

How do you know what you're going to do if you don't read the contract? So I think none of the rules

[Charles Stone]

or best practices for running an office,

[Paul Morantz]

a design office, no one needs to

[Charles Stone]

know about the money really. The project managers ought to have sort of the mid level and up. They ought to have a sense of what it all is and what it costs. But that's not primary. Primary is figuring out what you've agreed

[Paul Morantz]

to do for the client and get it done efficiently.

[Charles Stone]

So that has to do with that's not money.

[Sponsor Representative]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Take some risk. Be persistent.

[Charles Stone]

Persistence is good.

[Interviewer]

Thank you Charles. I appreciate it.

[Charles Stone]

It was fun and we went on for a while.

[Interviewer]

We had a few things to talk about.