The ROAR Podcast: Bruce Miller, Populous

# ROAR Podcast: Bruce Miller
**Guest:** Bruce Miller
**Date:** 2026-04-23
**YouTube URL:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd3qZSSNUBg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd3qZSSNUBg)
**Source:** YouTube auto-generated captions (no speaker diarization)

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(0:04) Welcome to the Revenue Above Replacement podcast. I'm your host Adam Grossman. With us today is Bruce Miller. Bruce, welcome to the podcast. It's great to be here. Thanks, Adam. Great to have you and we were having a conversation earlier which obviously getting into the what you were wearing and quarter zips and vests and getting colder. So, we'll spare the audience that. I'm glad we had that before, but we'll jump into the first question which we always ask our guests is walk us through your career today and tell us how you got to the point and position where you are today.

(0:36) Okay. Um well, uh becoming an architect. Uh I always tell this story because people sometimes ask me and I just so you know, I've been a terrible um advisor to my children because I've done what I've wanted to do since I was in third grade. Um a friend of my father's designed my parents' a home when I was in third grade. And so, I would go with my parents to his office and saw him use tracing paper and go over drawings and sketch over and that's kind of the methodology of an old school designers. They kind of do a sketch and then they overlay it and talk to the client about sort of what they see and do a sketch over that other one in response. And so, I would get the leftover sketches, you know, not the final thing, but I got these wild looking kind of I was at a fireplace kind of thing and then and then my parents built a house and I saw that little sketch that he had spoken with my parents about become reality and the whole house become reality. And to me that was magic. It was like I I'd always built things myself, you know, model boats and model cars and sailboats and things like that. And so, this idea of sketching and creating and and doing something that's that's bigger than you, right? It's it's not just your project. It's like something for lots of people. That that was really just inspiring from day one for me. So, Ted, my dad's friend, sort of became my mentor in my career path in architecture and his advice to me was be the most well-rounded person you can be because you'll encounter a lot of people in architecture and I think that's been very good advice to me in my journey to the position I'm in today. I'm the global chair and CEO of Populous. We're a 1,500 plus uh person firm and we work in 34 offices globally. But that career path has been a pretty long one. I never I never thought I would be at the same firm for now almost 36 years. I um and honestly, I kind of happened into it. Um I was in a co-op program at the University of Cincinnati and my girlfriend at the time moved to Kansas to go to school at KU.

(3:12) And so I wanted to be near her and I got a job at um what was then HOK Sport. And um you know, it happened to align architecture and sports for me. I was always a sports fan. I participated in sports and it just was this incredible opportunity to kind of marry those two passions of architecture and sports. And so I got a job with them as a co-op student, a sort of an internship, and I loved it. And they said, "Well, you know, if you ever want to come back, we'll have a job for you." Well, I graduated and I founded my own which is kind of what I'd always wanted to do. And then found out quickly I didn't like working by myself because I'm a little bit compulsive. I would wake up in the morning, go to my drawing board in the living room and just draw all day and go to sleep at night. And I didn't really have a team of people I worked with. I guess I like team sports. I miss that kind of team approach. And in architecture school you're surrounded by lots of people. Usually you're working in a studio and so you have this kind of collaborative process. And I really miss that. And so I came back to HOK Sport um in 2009 uh we rebranded ourselves through a management buyout as Populous and we've been Populous now for 16 years.

(4:45) But still specializing in sports, entertainment, and public assembly buildings. So I've had about every different role in the firm uh including my current role. And so I think I bring well-rounded experience as my mentor advised me to the position. You know, I'm really excited about our current work and about our future and excited to talk to you about it. Yeah, I think that's it's interesting that you've been like you said in the same even though the company has changed obviously in from in a couple different iterations with the same organization for a long time. And I think we want to delve into that in more detail. But first, while we've talked a lot about sports venues, mixed-use developments, we're having a few episodes about that this season. But want to kind of just start as to say a lot start from the beginning and can you tell me what is Populous? Like what is it that you're focused on and what is it that the company does particularly starting in sports and then we'll talk about it, you know, some of your expansion outside of sports It's recently. Yeah.

(5:47) Well, in the when I first joined the firm, we were sports architects. We specialized in sports. Um you know, it was a very new idea in architecture back in that era that you could specialize in a particular building type. You know, it was being starting to be done in lots of other professions like medicine for instance, sports medicine. You know, attorneys and the lawyers were beginning to specialize in certain areas of practice, but no one had really done it yet in architecture. The common belief at the time the firm was founded in 1983 was that you had to be a generalist. You had to be a good architect, you had to be able to design, you know, everything from a custom home to a hospital to a symphony hall. And so, it was a very innovative idea at that time to specialize and become experts in one area of architecture. And so, the firm grew and that sort of focus on sports really allowed the firm to position itself uniquely among other competitors. And we really became known as the leading firm in the world specialized in sports.

(7:07) At one point, we merged with a overseas practice and founded kind of our our international practice. And since then, we've really grown from being just an architecture practice to all areas of design. We have, I would say, all of the soft disciplines of design under the Populous brand today. That's really a reflection of our clients. We always say we follow our clients and look for what they're looking for. So, we have urban designers, master planners, landscape architects, interior designers, graphic designers, branding experts, just about every discipline you can imagine under the design umbrella other than engineering.

(7:56) We believe in hiring the best engineers for our projects because we do very unique structures in terms of many of them are long span or kind of big spaces on top of other spaces. And so structural and MEP are very unique services that we use kind of the best in the business engineers in doing. And so our our line of services has expanded over the years as our buildings have become more and more sophisticated. When I first graduated college and my friends thought Florida was pretty cool where I'd live, they thought, "Oh, you have your own firm. That's pretty cool." And then I told them I was moving to Kansas City and that I was going to design sports buildings and everybody was like, "Have you lost your mind?" In that era, sports were really an engineering project. They were, you know, I would say it was just a step above a parking deck, you know, very structurally responsive solutions that were just about numbers, right? Numbers of seats, how many people you could cram into a building, how efficient you could make it with these multi-sport kind of venues where it ended up not really being good for either baseball or football. If you look at projects like Three Rivers Stadium or Riverfront in Cincinnati, those we call them donut stadiums really didn't accommodate the NFL very well and they really didn't accommodate Major League Baseball very well.

(9:35) Because the size of the venues, number one was completely different and the sightlines and all of that were completely different in both of those venues. So, it really came about of developing specialized buildings for the individual sports. So, purpose-built venues for each of the sports. And so, my buddies really thought I was off my rocker and it turns out, you know, that HOK back then, HOK Sport had designed a couple of venues that I thought were really incredible all kind of urban redevelopment projects. There was a project called Pilot Field in Buffalo, New York that was a an urban project and it was designed with an architectural expression and really began to focus on kind of that human experience of these buildings rather than kind of the engineering solution of numbers and seats and how many people fit and that sort of thing. And so, I think that was really the the kernel of an idea to focus on human experience.

(10:45) And I would say that's really what's defined our practice is focusing on the human experience. And so, from sports and again, following our clients, many of our clients are in the entertainment area as well as sports. And so, sports entertainment seemed like a a very natural extension of our client base. So, projects like Co-op Live in Birmingham or I'm sorry, in Manchester, England for the same client group, but very different venue than a English football club. So, you know, that sort of extension and then we saw in the arena market that many of our arena clients also managed and built convention centers.

(11:32) And so that expertise in that typology seemed like a natural extension from the sports practice as well. And more recently, we've grown into areas like aviation where you know, if you think about it in the abstract, a sports facility and an airport are very similar in the types of buildings that they offer people that there's a concourse, there's a destination, there's all of the sort of services along the way. And again, that focus on human experience is really what we're trying to bring to the aviation market. A focus on actually making an airport a pleasant experience. I travel a lot and that's what I tell my friends is Kansas City is a very comfortable place to live, but I see the world in many different ways, usually from an airplane. So I spend a lot of time in airports and I think that focus on the human experience in airports is something that the aviation industry really needs.

(12:33) Yeah, there's a bunch there hopefully we get to get through, but I want to start with the experiences angle. Um you've you and Populous as a company has focused on you know, kind of moving to the experience, human experience and having the design of these venues reflect human experiences and make it so people want to come and not again, like you're saying, being driven by the functionality, but really by the form and experience. So I want to ask about what that, you know, if you can make make experience, make these ephemeral things, how do you guys make that more tangible? And then what are the differences maybe you see between domestically in the United States versus, you know, obviously this is a broad question, but globally and in different markets throughout the world.

(13:13) Yeah, I think a lot of it starts with listening. I think listening to our clients, we do a lot of research. I think listening to our clients, being curious, trying to understand how our clients believe their market, their building, their product is different than the rest of what's out in the world. And I think we we really focus on it from a very simple model of what is the experience? What are the sites, the sounds, the smells, the feelings of a place? And I think if you start from that kind of very humble point of view of putting yourself in a space and really trying to focus on what creates joy, what creates a wow moment, what creates a great experience for our clients' clients. Really, it's the people that we host in our buildings. And so, we always try to think about it starting with the large, you know, one of the things that's unique about our practice is that we do very large um very large structures, very large buildings that have literally city-making impact. Not only because of the scale of the building itself, but the traffic that it creates, both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. And so, we really look at the large to the very, very small, down to the human details of what do materials feel like as you walk along them, you know, what is your experience like as you enter a building, what's your experience like as you might have dwell time. You know, we try to focus on for instance, food and beverage.

(15:09) What's a great experience when you're waiting in line? Well, I don't like to wait. You know, again, back to that whole Usually, they're they're closing the door on me as I get on the airplane, right? I don't like to wait, but how can you make that wait time, which is almost inevitable, how do you make that wait time pleasant? Well, smelling great food is a great way to start, right? Watching great food being prepared, and so that kind of idea of display cooking, and that idea that it's more than just giving somebody 10 bucks and they give you a hamburger, right? That there's more to the interaction of food service than just a financial transaction. So, I think it's focusing on those very macro details all the way down to the the very human-centric kind of micro details of the experience.

(16:01) I I do want to get back to the international component of this, but one of the things you and I talked about a little bit before is, you know, you're talking about listening and listening to your clients, but obviously part of the reasons clients are bringing you in is for your expertise and knowledge and skill set, you know, the famous example to a certain degree is if you asked people in the 1900s what form of transportation they would want, they'd say a faster horse, cuz they didn't know a car existed, right? So, you guys have all this experience and maybe know how the car can exist when sometimes people are looking for the faster horse. So, how do you determine that balance of we have all this experience and knowledge and expertise versus balancing that with what the clients are asking you or looking for or needing from these projects and these developments?

(16:46) Yeah, you know, I tend to look at design as a as a just massive communication right? You're trying to get what's in the client's head and what's, you know, our field of expertise join together in a way that results in something really special, right? And so, it really starts with communication. One of the things we love to do is go on facility tours with clients. Sometimes those are international experiences and I think having more inspiration and I'm going to come back to that also, but having more experiences together with a client leads you to more conversations, leads us to asking better questions, and also gives us more kind of feedback from what's important to the client. When they can actually experience a building and see things that have been built, it really gives them um a better frame of reference. And some clients have done all of that research before they even talked to us, but I think the ability to ask questions about "Okay, we understand you like a particular building. Let's talk about what it is in particular that is appealing about that building and what are the things that really resonate with you about that building as opposed to maybe some other building that they've seen." And so that international experience is sometimes really valuable because we can bring our global expertise to bear on very localized problems. And I think back to your point about they're hiring us for expertise, I think it's it's this delicate balance and a a bit of a dance of not being presumptive, but also giving them the absolute best advice that we can based on that experience. I think again, to take it back full circle to my mentor in architecture, being the most well-rounded individual you can be, be the most well-rounded professional you can be with exposure to, you know, lots and lots of different experiences.

(19:03) And that's comes to down to our expertise. I think that's another basis for innovation. If you've seen problems over and over again, it's not to say that you come up with the same solutions, but you can then use that baseline of experience to then innovate, right? That there aren't any new ideas, as some people like to say, but there are tweaks on and having that baseline of really fundamental expertise is what I think our clients find we offer them in a way that no one else can. Yeah, and I do it now I do want to come back to the those kind of wow experiences, right? Cuz that's what you're whether it's, you know, obviously combination of talking to the clients, your own ideas and expertise expertise, global design, all of this thinking, this creativity. So, what do and, you know, I don't know if necessarily people would think of I go to the a building or a sports venue to have this wow experience or I leave wanting, you know, to have this wow experience. The ways that you guys obviously think about this all the time.

(20:09) So, what are some examples of uh in Populous both either in the United States or throughout the world where you've had these creative kind of wow experiences. You mentioned those kind of food designs of waiting in line, but what are some other examples that you've seen how you've really integrated the experience into the building so it makes these, you know, memorable moments for fans and all the stakeholders involved with sports teams. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, sometimes it happens, you know, we talked about scale. Sometimes the moment is on a very large scale.

(20:43) Sometimes it's on a smaller scale or on a more personalized scale and I think some of that depends on the site and, you know, you can look at say experiences like Wrigley Field. I mean, it's renowned in baseball for offering one of the best experiences in baseball, but as an expression of architecture, that's not, you know, what we would call a wow building, right? So, it's knowing when to create those moments of wow at a large scale, and when to have a very quiet experience, but that can be very impactful. So, like on the Minnesota Twins project, Target Field has been, you know, rated consistently one of the best experiences in baseball. And it was very diffi- It was a very difficult site, but I think overall, it was about knowing how to create an experience on a great on a very difficult, but a great site.

(21:48) You know, we like to call it one of the most urban ballparks in America because it's right on top of the skyline. As you experience the building, the skyline is never, you know, not a part of your field of view. And it's so I think that's kind of understanding from a very, again, macro perspective and a micro perspective, what can make a building special. And so, you know, using very local materials, really kind of knitting the building into the fabric of the city can create a really powerful experience without creating a building that kind of shouts about itself on a bigger stage.

(22:32) I would contrast that with the Kai Tak project, Kai Tak Sports Park in Hong Kong, where it's on a site in, you know, Hong Kong's one of the densest cities in the world. It's on the site of the old airport, which is right next right next to right near skyscrapers in their downtown, their their urban area. And so, it's this amazing site. The stadium sits virtually on the water, and so it demanded a very different response. It demanded kind of this wow moment because it sat on the waterfront surrounded by large urban buildings. And it was a very special site. And so the skin of that building is really really powerful. It You know, they call it the of the Orient. And that was the inspiration. It's got this reflective surface on the outside of the building that you know, really reflects all the colors of the light spectrum. And it changes throughout the day and with the sunlight. So, that is a building that at that scale at from the water, it's a wow kind of moment in terms of its architectural presence. So, those are two examples of very different buildings.

(23:49) They both have a wow, but in a very different kind of context. And and you brought up the community and build, you know, working with the community. And you mentioned, you know, obviously these venues are part of the community. Often times defining not just the sports team or franchise, but dividing the city, region, even the nation itself. That requires you to obviously engage with a lot a larger stake of people, particularly within the community and public officials. And A, how do those, you know, how do you guys think about engaging with community and public officials? And and B, how do you think about listening and incorporating what they're thinking about into the overall design process? Yeah.

(24:31) Well, it's always a process of listening. You mentioned it. And usually our partners on the in the public sector are very willing to help engage communities where these buildings really become a part of the neighborhood on a day-to-day basis. And so that's something we have to think about not only the large to small, but game day and non-game day use. And so All Park, for instance, using one of my experiences again, Target Field, but public partners were very responsive to the neighborhoods and making sure that they created forums for the neighborhoods, the community residents, to come in and speak about what their concerns were.

(25:19) You know, parking and traffic are always top of mind, you know, amazingly, and really to the project's benefit, the cycling community in Minneapolis was very vocal about the site that the ballpark is on was master planned as a throughway for one of their bike trails. And Minneapolis, if you've ever been there, has this amazing bike trail system. And so, this bike path went straight through the site, and we looked at gosh, 15, 16, 20 different options of how the bike path could go through the site. So, you know, that was an example of listening, proposing design options, getting feedback, going back to the drawing board, and really trying to develop the best design that we can, uh from many, many different constituencies.

(26:23) The bike community was only one of them, but it's that kind of melting pot of ideas where you want to get lots and lots of inputs, and then come up with the absolute best solution you can given the constraints you have on the site. And so, I think, you know, the public partners are very interested many times in public art and how public art can reflect the neighborhood. And so, we had a a great public art program. We were part of integrating those art pieces into the the design of the building. There was a a mural. We created space for a mural on one of the facades of the of the building. And the the great thing was that the Twins, our client, they were one of our clients. They were very supportive of it and actually invested in a whole art collection of art for a park, both public art in the public realm as well as a private art collection.

(27:26) So, it's those kinds of efforts that add another level of detail to buildings that on the face of it are you know, a million or so square feet. Um, which is really just a massive footprint when you consider, you know, I think the average house is like 2,500 or 3,000 square feet. So, just the scale of things, um, you know, starts to break things down into a more human-scaled experience. And is that a good kind of entryway into, you know, you're talking about the size of the building, the impact on the community? Sports footprint is now increasingly expanding beyond the venue or the anchor, you know, either the a training facility, the corporate headquarters, expanding out into the community through mixed-use development.

(28:11) Can you talk about how Populous sees mixed-use development and its impact on, you know, how you think about either sports venue construction on its, you know, within the context of mixed-use development? Yeah. Um, as I've said, we have always started from the big and work to the small. And I think that approach uh serves us well in this current kind of economic climate where you know, teams are realizing that that footfall that they've created in cities really could be monetized in terms of real estate development around facilities. And so that idea that we look at buildings both for game day and non-game day is really translated into applying that expertise to real estate in a defined district around a venue. And so we don't pursue every mixed-use project. You know, there are mixed-use projects that don't include a venue, but if there's a venue involved, we think we have a unique perspective on how to create both that game day non-game day, but also kind of the volume of traffic on game day and a neighborhood experience when there's not an event going on. And being able to manage that and create spaces that work in both of those modes and spaces that are somebody's neighborhood. Many of the ballparks in particular attract residential construction around them.

(29:44) The venues that offer many, many different kind of event days are the ones that really become great neighborhood partners to have because that footfall, that traffic really can lead to, you know, some great real estate opportunities, but also these great mixed-use districts that people really have an affinity for. People want to live where they can play and work and with working from home now, but the amenities around your home have become so much more important. So, you know, it's kind of a back to the future moment where people are, you know, craving more urban-like experience than a more isolated suburban residence.

(30:33) And so I think those forces as well as kind of the economic forces, teams realizing that they can monetize that real estate has led to this upsurge in mixed-use development around venues. And so, we just focus on the venue-based mixed-use developments, and they really have some great advantages because there's there's obviously the play, you're you know, of entertainment components. And sometimes there are different scale of um buildings involved. I'm working on one in St. Paul, Minnesota, where there's a soccer venue, um there's a hotel, there's many universities in the area, and then there's also, you know, kind of a need for an entertainment venue. So, you might have a an entertainment venue in the say 3 to 5,000 seat range, and then a soccer venue in the 20,000 seat range. And so, you kind of begin getting this breakdown or hierarchy of very different scale of meeting spaces or group spaces, you know, from in the hotel kind of conferencing space, where a company might be able to have a meeting and then go to see a concert in the evening, or go to a game and have kind of a team-building experience around that.

(31:57) So, there's lots of different scales to it, but I think the driver is really this idea of the the traffic that these venues really generate on non-game day as well as game day. All right. And this is a topic that I've talked about both on the podcast and in my writing, but the live-work-shop-play and the infusion of data into those. You know, you're talking about meeting spaces and creation. Populous has made a real strong effort to integrate data into both the venue construction, but also mixed-use development. Um can you talk about how you guys are thinking about integrating data into, you know, design and execution of uh, whether it's the venue itself or the mixed-use developments.

(32:38) Yeah, so a lot of it starts with market data, right? And looking at, again, it's the same as the context from an architectural perspective, but we want to know as much about the market as we can find out early on. And that includes everything from income level to demographics to, you know, competing venues. We want to know as much as we can. And then we began to sort of from a, uh, a breakdown perspective, start looking at personas and what it's like for each of the personas in that demographic to really look at their experience and focus on what it might be like for each of those personas. And there might be a dozen, right? There there could be many different types of personas, um, that make up the people that not only come to that community, but come to events in that community. And so it really starts with kind of that market look, that kind of view into, um, us kind of putting ourselves into the shoes of the people that live, work, play in the neighborhood as well as attend events. So, it's back to that human-centered approach. If we can approach things, you know, from the outside in and from the inside out as a user, you really begin to develop insights into what becomes valuable in terms of the real estate.

(34:14) One of the great things, I'll go back to baseball. I've spent most of my career doing baseball and soccer, so you'll see me talk about baseball and soccer because that's what I know. But from San Diego, one of the things we know is that a baseball field is 3 acres of green space, right? And every developer knows that green space, public space leads to increased real estate values. And it's really turned out that way that every unit that has a view of the playing field, always a bright emerald green playing field, manicured like no one else's lawn ever. Anybody that has a view of the ball field has an increased real estate value. And so it's type of it's intuition, but it then is supported by data. And so if we can both use data on the front end to begin to analyze kind of our markets and who we think our clients are, then we can also look at data on the back end to see, you know, was our intuition correct?

(35:19) Have we created more value in creating more views of the playing field. And a lot of that intuition has paid off over time. And so, you know, I think you have to constantly cycle data as well. We're not ever static. We're not a static culture. Um we're not static in the way we approach design problems and our our markets are always changing. So I think you have to look at data as kind of a repetition and look at number one assumptions and then results. And I think if you keep an open mind about your assumptions and whether you get it right or not. We don't always get it right. I think we can generally say we get the big moves, right? But we do a lot of what we call day two projects.

(36:10) And sometimes there are projects, the Minnesota Twins for instance, we continue to do projects with them over the years. The building opened in 2010, but for whatever reason, you know, maybe you know, there was a budget constraint, maybe things didn't work exactly the way we intended them to. Maybe, you know, we wanted appeal to a different demographic of people. Technology changes, right? One of the big changes that's occurred since Target Field opened is frictionless transactions. And so, those are some of the types of things that change over time and you always have to be kind of testing your assumptions with data and going back and kind of reanalyzing, you know, what you got right and what you maybe could improve on.

(36:59) And it's good you bring up technology. One of the things that, you know, we've been been exploring in this podcast is, you know, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence and the fusion of how content is consumed that that we actually do believe there is an increasing demand for real assets, real experiences, and in-real-life experiences. Uh how are you, you know, particularly with it seemingly people wanting to come together, particularly post-COVID, in these in-real-life experiences, how has even with the rapid rise, I don't know if you would agree with it. Hey, would you agree with that thesis that even with the rapid rise of technology, there is an increasing demand for in-real-life experiences? But how does the either artificial intelligence or technology more broadly and the way people are consuming content impact what you think about from a design perspective? Yeah, I you know, I'm I'm very lucky that I chose a profession where we focus on human experience. And I think COVID proved that that belief in bringing people together. Um and that's really the thesis of our company, that we create spaces where people love to be together. My wife has a psychology background and she tells me that people react differently.

(38:12) They react You and I would react differently. Our brains are wired differently. You know, we can have this video call, but if you were in the room with me, we would respond differently to each other. And so that's something that I've always believed and I think her what she tells me about psychology is that science supports that. Science supports the fact that people want to engage with other people. I think it's sort of primitive. Like we banded together. We have things in common. We band together as a society and you know, I'm I think again COVID proved that the work we do is more important than ever. You know, as the world becomes more and more divided and you could say technology is leading us that way.

(39:00) As the world becomes more and divided and more polarized, I think the buildings we create are still a place where people get together for joy. And I think that's something that really drives me that I think our buildings have incredible impact on people's lives and I think on our culture. If we lose those buildings, those spaces, those and that ability to come together and feel a sense of community, I think we'll truly be lost. And that's why I think the work we do is more important than ever that you know, we have plenty of technology and technology trust me, technology supports everything we do. With the global outage yesterday, we lost a lot of working hours. So we're we're heavily reliant on technology. But I think those authentic human experiences will never be replaced. I think we do so much with technology that helps us. And I think you can see a future where technology will continue to advance the experience, but I don't think it will ever replace the experience of people encountering one another one-on-one, as a group of 30,000, 50,000, 100,000. It's it's just a powerful and it creates emotion, right? We're Of course, we're driven by technology and data and facts and figures, but people remember how they feel, right?

(40:37) And that feeling of attending an event, one of my greatest experiences was going to the World Cup in Doha. And you know, one of my buddies, huge soccer fan, I ask him, I said, "Should I wear my USA Germany?" We were going to the USA Iran soccer match. And at the time things were pretty tense between the US and Iran. Like, but where are my USA jersey? He's like, "It's fine. It'll be great." And it was. It was like I had so many Iranian people come up to me and say, "We love America." And I said the same thing back to them. Like, it was people getting together, realizing that our governments are doing something we may or may not agree with, but we can come together around sport and cheer for our team, and no matter the outcome, have a great experience together. And so, I truly believe that, that you know, that sport, entertainment, coming together is fundamental to our culture, our global society, um and I think it's really something that drives me and drives our firm.

(41:48) Two two final questions as we're we're getting towards the uh end of the episode. >> Yeah, what I tell you? I know, I wish you had more time. We got more time. Yeah, we could have we could do Yeah, we might have to come back have you back on for a second episode, cuz I think there's a lot there, particularly in the technology side that we didn't we won't have time to cover, but two final questions. What again, more about you. A lot of the people listening to this podcast are either starting or on their career journey where they're making a transition in some form from something they used to do to pursue a career in sports. You know, you've arguably made a transition from a focus of being an architect, being a designer to now leading a global firm with hundreds, if not thousands, of employees. You've raised outside capital. You've made acquisitions.

(42:31) You're expanding. So, can you talk about your kind of personal journey in terms of what it was like to And I you're not I know you're still working on You mentioned some of the projects you're working on. You're still I'm still growing, man. I'm still learning. >> Yeah, but like transitioning at least in part from purely focused on an architect to all these other things that you're now in your purview as in your role as head of practice. Yeah. Well, first, I should go back to college. I almost got a certificate business, which is at Cincinnati was like a a minor. I screwed up some class that I took on a co-op semester. I took the wrong prerequisite, so I didn't get the degree, but I I did get a background in business. And I would say the first 10 years of my career, I I really questioned why I ever got that degree's relevance in my life. Now, you know, 35 years into it, I I think I use it all the time. And I think it's another basis of communication. So, that I can talk to our CFO and understand conceptually what he's talking about. I can talk to our chief legal officer and understand conceptually the rules of contract law.

(43:42) And so, that that background in business has really served me well. So, the transition really came for me in 19 when I was asked to become the managing director of the Americas region. And so, that role is like the CEO of a region. And I really resisted that. And I resisted it because I was flying all over world. I was doing these I was living my dream, right? I had always wanted to be an architect. I had wanted to do big projects. I wanted to, you know, just and I was doing that and I was living my dream. And I'll never forget I was at a board meeting in Singapore and one of the founders came to me kind of he's a very nice guy, but he kind of poked his finger at my chest and said you need to do this.

(44:35) And it just like, wow. You know, he would never say that. What what's he talking about? And it just made me reflect. Wow, I'm not as young as I used to be and my role in the firm has to be different now. And so, you know, that founder who was looking forward at that point in his career to transitioning was looking for someone else to do the work that he'd been doing. And you know, so I resisted it, but I came to realize that the firm had given me so much over my career that it was time for me to give back. And I think that's the way I look at leadership is you're trying to create the environment for others to be successful. And I really believe that, especially in a professional services environment where everyone we hire anymore, I don't have a master's, but almost everyone has at least a master's degree.

(45:34) They've gone to school for 6 to 8 years. They've gotten through their registration exams. They want some autonomy. They want that same thing that I wanted. I wanted to be an international architect, you know, leading clients, doing great buildings. And so I think now that's that's the transition to firm leadership is that you go from leading clients and project teams, which is a whole learning path under itself, to a new scale of I led a practice area for a while, two practice areas, baseball and then soccer, and then I led a region, and now I'm leading the global company. But, it's all with a spirit of service and a spirit of constantly trying to be better. And I think that's what I try to encourage in all of our people is we want you to be the best you can be, and that doesn't happen overnight, but it's incremental improvement on a daily basis. If you can walk away from each day saying, "I learned something, I got a little bit better at this, I did something I'd never experienced before, I tackled it, I'll be better the next time I do that."

(46:53) I think that's really what a professional service firm is all about. And so, that striving for excellence, that continuing to grow throughout your career, and I think that's something that architecture is unique in that you know, architects that are Frank Lloyd Wright practiced it till, you know, he passed away into his 90s. And so, you know, it's a profession that is continually evolving, it's continually interesting, and really is a great profession for someone who's curious, likes to learn, and likes to be of service to others. Yeah, final question, which we ask to all of our guests is your um you know, obviously in a position where you're leading a global company. A lot of ours um audience is looking to, like I said, on their career journey.

(47:42) So, when you're hiring people um at Populous, what are you looking for? What characteristics, attitudes, you know, what are some traits that you're looking for as you're looking to hire and build out your team? Yeah, I think curiosity is a it's a big thing for me because I think you have to be curious as a designer. I think grit, you know, someone demonstrating that they have overcome a difficult situation, whether it be you know, a personal situation, a professional situation, or situation with other people. I think that's really key. You know, being a team player. You know, we use the sports analogies a lot, but you know, I think and being willing to, you know, be humble. I always say I want to be, you know, the worst player on a five-person basketball team because you play up, right? And I think in my career journey, I've always wanted to play up to that next level, be surrounded by people who are better than I am because I want to be better. And I think that drive, that passion for what we do is really critical. It's not an easy profession. It's not an easy career path. We put in a lot of time.

(48:58) We travel a lot. We're away from our families a lot. But it's that drive, that kind of constant curiosity, and that ability to figure things out. I think you know, we're constantly faced with diametrically opposed goals, and that that being able to synthesize and find common ground and push for a solution that serves many different purposes is something, but is really critical. Yeah, well, I guess fortunately for me, I'm often the worst basketball player on a five-player team, so for example, for me, but Bruce, appreciate the time, appreciate the insights. It's a great conversation.

(49:37) Thank you for being a guest on the Revenue Above Replacement podcast. Thanks, Adam. And like I said, it's gone quickly, and you know, I really appreciate you. Thanks a lot.