Frank Stasiowski, ’75MBA, likes to tell people that he’s lazy.
It’s unlikely anyone really believes him.
Stasiowski, the founder, CEO, and president of PSMJ Resources, Inc., which specializes in improving the business performance of architectural, engineering, and construction firms, recently marked the company’s 50th year in business.
For Stasiowski, a Bryant University trustee, the core business principles that have guided a half-century of success began as a kid delivering the Providence Journal to his neighbors.
“I didn't want to have to, at 10 years old, figure out how to invoice people,” he recalls. “So I said, no, you have to pay me in advance. It was that kind of thinking, and maybe business laziness, that forced me into creating these principles.”
Almost everything PSMJ provides to customers still requires payment in advance. A strong believer in “pull through” rather than “push through” selling — a philosophy he credits his Bryant professors with articulating to him — Stasiowski insists that all of PSMJ’s sales materials and messaging includes valuable intellectual capital.
The intent, he says, is to prove the value of the company’s consulting services upfront.
“I've never had to borrow money the entire 50 years in business because what we do is borrow from our customers in advance,” he says. “That’s a lesson for students who might want to start a business. That’s why I volunteer with the IDEA (Innovation and Design Experience for All) program. You have these freshmen coming in with a great idea, and they don't even think about the business principles they want to follow.”
The author of more than a dozen books and countless articles, as well as a popular motivational speaker, Stasiowski’s educational journey began with a BFA in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design before he earned his MBA at Bryant.
In the early 1970s, the U.S. government banned the fee scale that architects had long used to charge for their services. Stasiowski found himself with a unique mix of experience in architectural and a grasp of the basic billing and accounting principles that architectural firms — which previously just had to calculate fees based on a percentage of construction costs — suddenly needed to run their businesses.
“I think I was the only one in the country getting an MBA at that time as an architect,” he recalls.
Volunteering on a board tasked with designing a new billing scheme for the architectural industry, Stasiowski bucked the conventional wisdom that architects should switch to hourly billing like lawyers and accountants, instead advocating for upfront, project-based billing.
“They weren't charging for value; they were charging for hours,” he says. “To this day, I fight architects selling time. The least profitable, least productive architects in the world sell hours.”
Stasiowski’s pull-through sales philosophy also underlies his prolific publishing and public speaking, as well as the industry surveys that PSMJ publishes periodically.
“I want to produce things that are so valuable that people call us, and the angle that I took was to challenge people to think differently.”
“I want to produce things that are so valuable that people call us,” he says, “and the angle that I took was to challenge people to think differently.”
At first, Stasiowski harvested ideas from other professions and applied them to architectural management; when that proved successful, PSMJ expanded into the related fields of engineering and construction. Business concepts initially proven in the U.S. were later adopted for satellite operations in the U.K., Australia, and Brazil, turning Newton, Mass.-based PSMJ into a global company.
The PSMJ name, while well known in the industry, has obscure origins rooted in the company’s earliest years: It stands for Professional Services Management Journal, the industry publication that helped Stasiowski launch his consulting career.
The CEO, likewise, throws a public shroud of mystery over his role at PSMJ.
“I wanted this business to last longer than me, and if I put my name on it, that’s not going to happen,” he says. “This is a team sport; I want succession. And if it's about the customer, how can I put my name on it?”
Stasiowski sees the evolution of PSMJ’s business as a reflection of its core principles, not its C-suite leadership.
“If you're going to grow a business, you’ve got to get to a point where the purpose of your company is more important than the individuals,” he says. “That's really hard for students to understand sometimes, because they're coming out of school with an awful lot of drive that’s ego-driven — ‘I can do this!’ — and they want to put the name on it, get credit for it.”
That’s understandable, says Stasiowski: “I wanted to do the same thing. But I observed some of these architects that had put their name on the business were struggling with transitioning. They couldn't get out. They couldn't stop. And they were working 80 hours a week.”
His own self-defined ‘laziness,’ by contrast, underpins another one of Stasiowski’s guiding philosophies.
“I tell people my job is to do as little as I possibly can do."
“I tell people my job is to do as little as I possibly can do,” he says. What Stasiowski means is that he hires qualified people, empowers them to make decisions, and is content to allow them to do what they do best with a minimum of supervision or hand-holding.
“For instance, our best speaker on leadership owned his own firm, and he's now out worldwide under contract to us exclusively to teach leadership for architects and engineers,” Stasiowski says. “He does his own thing. He's not an employee. He's a 1099 who travels the world, holding our business card.”
After 50 years of business success, the humility gained through experience has positioned PSMJ for future success even when — or if — Stasiowski decides do something as ‘lazy’ as retiring or just spending more time on his boat in Narragansett Bay or off the coast of Nantucket.
“There's so many things I can't do,” he says, “so I find people to do it and have them buy into our principles, which are focused on how we can help our clients to be more successful. And that's how we've grown.”
