Teach Your Clients Well: An Ounce of Prevention will Save a Ton of Billable Hours (Practice‪)‬

architect Scott Guyon, AIA, thinks of his clients as heroes. Of the new homes built in central Kentucky last year, only about 10 percent were designed by architects. So, he figures, the relatively few brave souls who request his services are not ordinary people. They have a higher threshold for uncertainty than most, and they've got faith that the reward will be worth the moments of fear and loathing, which are inevitable. Even so, they are utterly human. "I would say the biggest problem any client will face is the workings of his own mind during this process," says the Lexington, Ky.-based architect, as though he were a psychologist. In some ways, he is. We live in an instant gratification society, one that's accustomed to buyer-protection plans, escape clauses, and consumer advocates. But unlike other purchases, architecture is a piece-by-piece venture in which clients have huge sums of money at stake and little recourse or control. In that sense, "much of this process is like getting a life-threatening disease," Guyon says. "Over the course of a year, they can talk themselves into a very high level of anxiety. It's a constant shepherding process."