Ben:
I am not about to break down all of my employees' payroll and details on a public forum. I would share general details with you in private if you want. The highest # of full-time employees I've ever had was eight, and that was too many for the amount of work we are doing right now. I can also say we're stretched pretty thin right now supporting six employees, plus three or four other guys who have been working for us doing shaping work as independent contractors, and a couple of interns ... not to mention 7 spouses and 14 kids!
But, let's do some simple math. Say your two shapers/associates are making $100K per year plus benefits ... (that's a reasonable number if they're young and single, but not when they are 35 and starting a family) ... so that's $250,000 for the two of them. And you want to pay them to do one job every other year, so that's $500,000 per job. But the entire shaping budget is only going to be $350,000 to $500,000, and two guys aren't going to do 100% of that work. So you are going to have to subsidize their pay out of your design fee, whatever you are charging; and if you are only designing one course every other year, that means your design fee had better be north of $500,000, assuming you think you should make more than your shapers do.
I don't know how many architects charge a $500,000 design fee, except I know that prices are deflating as we speak.
Also, understand that unless an architect has a very understanding spouse who wants to move around the world with him (which is the most underrated part of Alice Dye's life and career), it is impossible for an architect to "stop traveling". Even in your dream scenario of 1 project per year, while you're working on that one project you are going to have to make 3-4 trips to get the routing done for next year's project, and also 3-4 trips (if not more than that) to meet the clients and look at sites for the year after next ... unless you are also paying a business manager, who would add another large chunk of payroll to the equation.