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Firing The Man
THANK YOU TO OUR 25,000+ LISTENERS! We are so thankful to be one of the TOP E-Commerce Podcasts delivering high-quality authentic content to you! Serial Entrepreneur’s David Schomer and Ken Wilson share tips, advice, and insider knowledge about all things Amazon FBA, Walmart WFS, and E-Commerce. Discover how you can create multiple income streams by selling physical products online so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love - whether that is spending more time with family or traveling the world. Ken and David have successfully created several six and seven figure online business ventures. During the journey, they have had major wins, losses, and lessons learned. This podcast will teach you about selling physical products online through platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon, building a team, outsourcing, listing optimization, pay per click (PPC) advertising, driving traffic to your listings, and productivity tips / life hacks that will provide a path to be successful in building your online business. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Ken and David you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Firing The Man
Architect to Entrepreneur: Building a Legacy with Lance Cayko
What turns a teenage construction worker into a successful architectural entrepreneur? For Lance Cayco, co-founder of F9 Productions, the journey began at age 13 when his first boss taught him the economics of service businesses while roofing houses in North Dakota. That early lesson planted the seeds for a career spanning architecture, construction, business ownership, and community leadership.
Lance's path wasn't without significant challenges. After graduating at the top of his architecture class, the Great Recession delivered a devastating blow—layoffs just nine months into his professional career. This setback became the catalyst for founding F9 Productions, built on a revolutionary premise in the architecture world: prioritizing customer service over design ego. As Lance candidly shares, "There's so many architects out there that insist on it being much more of an art than a business." His firm's competitive advantage? Simply answering the phone when potential clients call.
The conversation explores how negative role models shaped Lance's business philosophy. Learning from "awful business owners" who laid him off, he built a firm with no layoffs in 15 years by being a "positive reactionary"—deliberately doing the opposite of what caused his former employers to fail. This approach extends to his podcast, Inside the Firm, which transparently shares business lessons to counter the "victimhood rhetoric" discouraging entrepreneurship among younger generations.
Beyond business insights, Lance offers a refreshing perspective on integrating professional success with personal fulfillment through his work with Longmont Community Gardens. "Instead of work-life balance, what if we aim for work-life harmony?" he suggests, describing days that seamlessly blend office work with community gardening. For aspiring entrepreneurs questioning when to start their own venture, his advice is counterintuitive yet compelling: "The Great Depression... We started ours in the Great Recession. It put us in a corner of a corner. We were super hungry every day."
Practical, inspiring, and refreshingly honest, Lance's story illuminates how entrepreneurship can create both professional success and meaningful community impact when built on discipline and customer-focused foundations.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson. Entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Firing the man podcast, a show where we bring you the real story, strategies and insights from entrepreneurs who have taken control of their own destiny. Today, we have a powerhouse of a guest joining us Lance Syko. Lance is an architect, entrepreneur and educator who, along with his business partner, alex Gore, co-founded F9 Productions, a top-tier design build firm in Longmont, colorado. With a background spanning architecture, construction and business, lance has been at the forefront of creating innovative, high-quality designs in both residential and commercial spaces. Beyond running a successful firm, lance is deeply committed to sustainability as the president of Longmont Community Gardens, promoting green initiatives and community engagement. He also co-hosts Inside the Firm podcast, where he shares hard-earned lessons on scaling architecture firms, entrepreneurship and navigating the business world.
Speaker 2:In today's episode, we dive into Lance's journey from building a thriving architecture firm to his passion for business, community and sustainability. If you're an entrepreneur, business owner or someone looking to fire the man and build something of your own, this is an episode you will not want to miss. Let's get into it, lance. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, david, absolutely. So, to start things off, can you share with the audience your transition from architecture and building to a thriving design build firm?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm 42. My story starts when I was 13, growing up in Northwest North Dakota. I grew up between a sugar beet farm and a cattle ranch and on the sugar beet farm I went out to go get my first real job, which was like working with my dad irrigating sugar beets, and I lasted about a week. He and I just didn't get along and I said I had a replacement, even ready to like. My best friend Chris was. I was like hey Dad, I had a replacement, even ready to like. My best friend Chris was. I was like hey, dad, I'm not going to do this anymore. I, you know I don't like it, it's not for me, but Chris was happy to take my job. Chris took my job and he goes. My dad was like well, you got to do something. I'm like, yeah, of course. Like I want money for school clothes Cause dad wouldn't.
Speaker 3:General contractor his name is Bruce asked him for a job and I said I'll do anything and he goes well, you can, uh, you can be, you can be my gopher. I was like cool, and he was like he said, yeah, pay $7.25 an hour. And I was like what's a gopher? And he goes oh, when you're gonna go for this, go for that. When you're done going for the things, then you can get on the roof with the big boys and learn how to roof and I was the best dang gopher he ever had. I just instantly fell in love with the whole industry right away. I love the camaraderie. I love even the catcalling just kind of that environment. It was just rough gruff guys.
Speaker 3:And I was a skinny 13-year-old kid and I wanted to get muscles and it was real hard work but it was so rewarding because you got to see the roof taken off in the morning, put it back on the next day. But it was so rewarding because you got to see the roof taken off in the morning, put it back on the next day. About halfway through the summer Bruce saw something in me that he didn't see in maybe anybody else that he ever hired before and I think it was just enthusiasm and actually like loving the job and being curious about everything. And he says so. He pulled me aside one day and he goes you know I pay you $7.25 an hour. What do you think I charge the customers? I pay you $7.25 an hour. What do you think I charge the customers? I go $7.25 an hour. And he laughed and he laughed and I was like I was kind of embarrassed. And he goes no, no. And then he explained how service-based businesses work right, especially if you're employing people. There's usually a two or three or four X factor. If I pay them. You know I'm charging the customer two or three, four times, like you're what I pay you per hour and I go. Oh why. I mean that seems, are you ripping them off? And he goes no, no, no, no, no, this is this. And he explained profit, overhead, downtime, you know, going after work, the whole. He explained everything to me and I just completely transformed my brain that day.
Speaker 3:And then I had another epiphany, and the sister epiphany to that was I had the rich dad, poor dad experience, without even knowing who Reaper Robert Kiyosaki was, and I only read the book maybe about 10 years ago. But after I read the book I went, oh my gosh, I had the rich dad, poor dad experience, because Bruce had almost no anxiety when it came to money and that's all my mother and father had was anxiety. And you know, they had a cope, even when I was growing up, and it was having money. They would say having money isn't everything. And I hated that. I just hated hearing that. I was like, what a cope. Like like so that's how you're going to live your life.
Speaker 3:And then my favorite rapper, about 10 years ago, uh, kanye west said, finish the sentence for me. And he goes having money isn't everything, not having it is. And I was like, oh, that's what I've been waiting for. Like I thank you and uh, and so I go. Well, I said so well, well, bruce, how do I? At the end of the summer, I was like, how do I become you like, how do I become a general contractor? And he goes. And it was one of the probably bravest things maybe the guys ever said. Like it was such a beautifully confident thing to say Because I even think about it as me, as an employer, to say what he said, which was well, you don't work for me next summer, you go work for somebody else, and then you work for somebody else and work for somebody else.
Speaker 3:You need to learn all the different trades so you can be a general contractor. And he knew how good of a worker I was, too so for him to say that was like what a fatherly moment. I mean, that's just like I thought it was so beautiful in hindsight. So that's what I did From 13 to 21,. I went, I wanted to be a builder first, so I worked all those different trades, went to tech school for building construction technology in Wahpeton, north Dakota, and by the end, when I went to tech school, it was like the first time I ever liked school and all of a sudden I had a choice of what I wanted to do and I was getting straight A's and getting all these scholarships and like monetizing going to school.
Speaker 3:It was amazing. So I get to the end of my stint there, my two-year stint and our capstone project was we had to build a house with our team and I started looking at the blueprints and I was like why did the architect like draw it like this? And then another light bulb went off and it was probably the biggest one of my life and it was, oh my gosh, what if I became an architect first, if I became our second? Like if I became an architect I would get the clients first and then I could fold them into building clients Like I would make too many two times, you know. And then I didn't even think about real estate development until college. And then that was like sort of third light bulb. I was like once I got into architecture school and finished that I was like, well, shouldn't I be a developer too? So that's what's kind of led me to be this serial entrepreneur and trying to have a vertically integrated design, build and ultimately develop firm. And that's why we do what we do.
Speaker 2:Outstanding, outstanding. So you go to tech school, you go to college, and then what comes next after that?
Speaker 3:Oh, big letdown, Big layoff, yeah. So I graduated at the top of my class in architecture school. I won the Peter F McKinsey Award at North Dakota State, which is? It basically says you are the top of my class in architecture school. I won the Peter F McKinsey Award at North Dakota State, which is? It basically says you are the top graduating student with a master's degree and you have the best thesis and all this stuff. So I was just like cloud nine. I was even being recruited by MIT. I declined to go to MIT because I was like one of my professors was like you got to go practice, otherwise you're just going to be an academic your whole life. And I know that's not what you don't want to do, lance, like you want to be this trifecta thing. So I applied to jobs in Oregon, I applied to jobs in Montana and I applied to jobs in Colorado because I just wanted to be in the Rocky Mountain region. I just the mountains are like my calling and fishing and all the other outdoor stuff I do, and so I got one interview in Oregon. It went okay. They didn't hire no interviews in Montana. I had seven in Colorado.
Speaker 3:So my fiance at the time and I, we left Fargo on that spring break to come out and do all the interviews. It was 70 below. When we left Fargo, north Dakota, with the windchill, and then it was 70 above in Colorado and this was like March, like kind of right now, and I stayed with my aunt and I was like why, how come you guys haven't told us about this weather? And they're like that's the secret of the whole thing. So I interviewed all over the state Aspen, denver, boulder, all over the whole state and we got an offer in Aspen. My wife said no at the time. I'm glad she did too. She's like we're not raising kids in Aspen. I'm like that's totally fair.
Speaker 3:And then, but there was a firm I really liked in Boulder that I landed with and I didn't get a job right away. Actually, I graduated and I had to keep pestering them and I finally got a job in October of 2008. But it only lasted nine months Because if any of your I'm sure your listeners are savvy to the extent that they remember the Great Recession and that's exactly what happened. So it lasted about nine months. The Great Recession hit 50% of architects, engineers, contractors were laid off during that time. It was just completely devastating to one of the biggest industries in America right Home building or just building in general.
Speaker 3:And I was laid off by these two guys that I just really learned a lot of lessons from, because they were just awful business owners learned a lot of lessons from because they were just awful business owners. So that's when I decided to fire the man is when I was so hurt and dejected. I just never wanted to put myself in the position of being vulnerable like that again with my employment, especially with my children relying on me, my wife relying on me. I just vowed from that day like, not only am I going to never have to lay myself off again, but I've had F9 Productions for 15 years and we've had no layoffs, because we're positive reactionaries in the way we've built our business compared to how those guys built their business which, by the way, is now defunct like completely fell apart.
Speaker 2:One thing I want to call out about your response which I really really like was the people that were employing you I'm paraphrasing were great examples of not how to run a business, and I think when people think about role models, they often think of positive role models, which are important, but I would argue that negative role models, or people that show you the path not to take, are equally as important. And so what have been some of those you know, as you've started F9 and have been successfully running it? What have been some of those lessons that you've brought with you?
Speaker 3:you know, number one is just pick up the phone and don't be actually. I would say this let me back up. Number one is don't be afraid to actually lean into the fact that having an architecture firm is a business Like I really can't emphasize that enough that, like there's so many architects out there that are that insist on it being much more of an art than a business, right, and it's all focused on the design and what they can do design-wise what's going to be pretty, what's going to look good, what's going to make them look good, and it might not even be functional, right of what they're designing for their folks. They're so focused on that they don't focus on customer service almost whatsoever. So one of the things that I noticed right away in reaction to not only having been employed by those guys but then freelancing for some other architects, and then, once we started our business, just hearing the reaction of the public like they would send us an email, they would find us online or something we used to actually use Craigslist to advertise it was fantastic, believe it or not.
Speaker 3:Especially during the Great Recession, people are looking for deals and we were like, hey, as long as we figure out how to still make money and give them a quote-unquote deal compared to the next one. Where's the harm here? And the reaction we would get when we would. It was so crazy, david. They would call us or email us and let's say we missed the call or we missed the email. It was like we would try to. We always made a rule. It was like get back to them within one hour. If not, if that's not possible, 24 hours or less, and we pick.
Speaker 3:We usually do the one hour, within one hour or almost immediately, and it was overwhelming. Over and over again it was like oh my God, thank you for calling me back. You're like the 15th architect I've called and nobody will answer the phone. So, honestly, this is the most fundamental thing you would think of. So I'm just like so grateful for all those architects that are still doing a really, really bad job of just picking up the phone, responding to the text, responding to the email and like, what a layup for me. Like what a layup for me. I really live and die by this, the law of polarity, where it's like there's a negative thing that's going to happen in your life or that you see happening in the environment you are. And in order to balance that out, there has to be a positive, like it's an actual law of physics, right? So I'm always looking for those kind of openings, especially when we first formed F9.
Speaker 3:And how can we be positive reactionaries to all that negative stuff that ended up getting us laid off and ending up having us firing the firm? And one of the ways we do that is we have these nine foundations, these nine foundational principles Be brilliant at the basics, model it like it gets built. Training is a force multiplier. Communicate, uh, is our fourth one. Serve the client, the contractor, the city, take extreme ownership, build the world, deliver valuable to be valuable and then have fun is the last one. But you didn't even hear the word design there, right? They didn't hear the word like architect. It's all about customer service I like it.
Speaker 2:I like it so so. So who does F9,? What would a typical client look like?
Speaker 3:Your typical.
Speaker 3:We actually have a pretty good range of clients.
Speaker 3:We have a lot of first-time folks that are going to build their house for their first time, do their first addition, a lot of first-time developers, a lot of first-time business owners are opening up that first cake shop, their first dog accessories shop or something like that, and we really like those kinds of clients.
Speaker 3:They end up being repeat clients after a while, but we like those clients because we're young, energetic, we're fun and we try to be the best listeners we can. I mean 90% of the first sales meetings that I have with a meeting with a potential client, 90-95% of the meeting is me just listening, taking notes, being empathetic and trying to understand how we can solve their problems. And at the very, very end is the only time I ever start talking about us and it's like but I am phrasing it in a way of like here's how we can help you, I've listened to everything and here's how we can make that sort of thing happen. We do have some veteran developers for sure that hire us to do, you know, pretty big, substantial developments. Right now there's a 75 townhome project, multifamily project in the town we headquartered in that we're working on. Right now we're about halfway through the design process, but that's kind of the usual mix of who we're working with.
Speaker 2:Okay, now put yourself in the shoes of. It was Bruce, right? Yes, okay, so you've now become a Bruce, and envision a young Lance comes in and is interested in starting an architecture firm. What would be some guiding principles or things that you would share with a young Lance, based on your experiences of building and scaling F9?
Speaker 3:If you can't sell, you might not. You shouldn't even try to do this because, because it's such a critical part it's like my business partner and I that is, the majority of our job is out there. We're out there prospecting. I'm doing media interviews like this. I'm talking to local newspapers. I was just on the phone with the New York Times about two or three hours ago, about two or three hours ago, and we're always looking for inroads about how we can get our name out there, how we can get in front of people, how we can help people, and especially in an environment right now which the economy is pretty flat, I will tell you it's not hot anymore like it was when they printed all the money during COVID and everybody had money and everybody could build and everybody wanted to stay at home and they all had these home offices or whatever. Or they're moving from the coast inland and you know, making all that kind of stuff happen Like the multifamily sector is pretty dead. So right now, like it is so critical to it when you get that inquiry still follow that original idea that we had where it's like I need to get back with this person immediately. It doesn't matter how small the project is. If it's a project that will still pay the bills for us right now or we're kind of scrapping through things and trying to still not lay people off, then it's really important that they feel all those customers, no matter how small they are, they feel like the number one. They feel like they're our number one customer. They feel like they're treated like kings and queens and that's why we have so many five-star reviews on Google. So that would be.
Speaker 3:I never heard any talk about being a good salesman or good saleswoman or salesperson in college and it's so important and I think everybody can learn it. But there has to be like a burning desire to in your belly and that's why I tell people all the time like I just posted this on LinkedIn the other day. I was like there's three times. There's people ask me all the time like when's the best time to start a business? And I go Great Depression. They're like what? I'm? Like why not? Well, you started ours in the Great Recession. It put us in a corner of a corner of a corner. We were super hungry every day. We had to move forward. There was no option of failure. It forced us to be super creative, super lean and all of that kind of stuff. So that's the mindset to be in. Even if you start a business and you're in a good economy is sort of a trick yourself into that Very nice, very nice.
Speaker 2:Now, through running your business, are there any systems or processes that you feel like really help with, say, communication with employees or project management or anything that you would you would share with the other business owners?
Speaker 3:tuning in today, Well, here's a really nuanced, weird one that I brought up the other day on a different show too, and somebody asked me was it all about communication? But the reaction was really positive. I was kind of surprised. We have a rule at F9 and F14, and that is, if you're an admin person so me or Al or two of the project architects, or, on the construction side, the superintendent or the foreman we know that we are very, very busy to the point where, like my day is sometimes just so stacked, I am just it's just meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, and I can't just take a random call meeting, meeting, meeting, and I can't just take a random call. So the rule is is that please text me first and say are you available for a call? That's much more manageable, because then, even if I'm talking to you right now and I'm not on my phone, but if I was checking my texts, I could say, hey, I'm in a podcast, I'll hit you back in 30 minutes, or something like that. So then at least they know you know some kind of form of communication is coming down the pipeline.
Speaker 3:Lower level staff have to have to do the same thing for us as well, up through the admin level. So it's a it's text, just sort of a pre, like a hey. It's like a pre pre call, are you ready? Sort of prompt. It might sound stupidly simple, but man it just. It saves us so much time and anxiety and helps people be readily available and respects their time and doesn't interrupt them. That's just been something we've developed only in the last like six months. I like it.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you, I deal with the same thing, where my calendar will be stacked one after the other from eight until five, and I'll get a call midday, and when I have to call them back the next day, um, they, you know, I would have loved to get back to them faster, but if they saw my calendar they'd understand. Yeah, and so I like that, I like that pro tip. So, um, let's chat about inside the firm podcast. So what was kind of the origin story of starting?
Speaker 3:you know, al and I are, we're, we're millennials, is what I like like to say right, it's like kind of millennial, kind of Gen X, so we're kind of in the middle right, we're like 1983, 1985 and that weird area and and the and the reason I'm saying that is because, uh, that makes us like podcast junkies. I think our generations, we just I mean, we're the the Joe Rogan era, tom Green's the original actually I just found that out on his documentary and you know, like last time I was listening to Joe Rogan, ian Carell was on. It was fantastic and I just look up to that stuff. I just love like storytelling and how genuine it was and how opposite it was of just like the Fox News or MSNBC, like stupid soundbites that aren't helpful for society or our thinking or anything. So we were just huge fans first of all. And but then we got to in 2017 is when we started it and that had that had been year seven of F9. And what happens at year seven for any businesses? Usually that's when your rate of failure, percentage wise, almost it shrinks. You know, very down to down to like a couple of percentage points. Most startups fail within the first seven years, and so we got to year seven and we went oh cool, like I think we're going to make it. I think we're going to make it.
Speaker 3:Really hated the rhetoric at the time of victimhood that was being perpetuated in the media about Gen X, millennials, even now Gen Z of, like the world stacked against you and the American dream is dead, and like you might as well just give up and get a government job, and like all of that. I just hate that. I hate that so much. I was like we should tell our story because then maybe there's people that will listen and be inspired. Like, if anything, I just want to give back and say like you can do it too. Like I want more entrepreneurs and good capitalists out there in America than I want people who are just off the government dole. Like I want people that are out there with skin in the game, because if they have skin in the game especially if they end up having a family like that's a different America, that's the America I want to live in.
Speaker 3:So that's why we started the podcast and we started with episode zero. It was, you know, a little short little intro and then we just jumped into like rewinding time, as if we were recording it in 2010 and telling the whole story. And we really do have a garage, a garage story and telling the whole story. And we really do have a garage, a garage, you know story. We weren't started out of garage, but we're definitely out of my business partner's one bedroom apartment in his dining room Like that's where we started the firm, and now I'm sitting in our actual office building that we designed, built and developed for ourselves and that's why it's called Inside the Firm too. As we just said, let's just bring everybody inside the firm. Like I don't think anybody's doing this yet and nobody really was.
Speaker 3:There's a couple other copycat podcasts in the architecture community that are like that now, which I'm flattered by, where they're just open vests and they just tell how it works. And we were also reacting. We created it because we were reacting to most architects. It's moving in the right direction now, but most architects, especially even then, you know, a decade and a half ago we're just so close to their best and so worried and protectionist. I'm very much a Genesis 128 guy be fruitful and multiply. So I don't believe in this. You know that there's not enough. There's not enough for everybody, it's like, and the more. It seems like the more you give, the more you get. The more positive you put out, the more you attract. So that's the idea behind the podcast.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's awesome. It's not often that I have another podcaster on here, and so it's fun to talk about that experience and I describe it. You know, this is episode 266. And I have it's like a PhD of education and you kind of get to pick your professors. I love it. And if you were to give me a million dollars tomorrow to stop podcasting, I wouldn't take it. It's so curious, like what's been your experiences with having your own podcast?
Speaker 3:Well, there's ups and downs, you know. So my experience has been mostly positive. I want to clarify to, like when we first started the show up until about 2019, would have been 2019. Yeah, 2019. So that would have been two or three years where we just did a Friday show and it was just inside the firm. It was just me and Al talking shop and you know we, even when we did our real estate development, we talked about the whole thing. I mean, like there was tragedies that happened on site and everything like that. We had a huge flood and just laid everything bare and you know it was like gripping stuff actually. Like we had like amazing letters come in from people.
Speaker 3:No-transcript been the most rewarding as of late, because I'm just learning from people and there's been so many times when I'll have like an author on.
Speaker 3:That I think is going to be interesting and sure enough they turn to be interesting and they'll get like halfway through the episode and they'll go I just bought your book on Amazon and then the book will change my life.
Speaker 3:You know there's been a couple of those that have happened to, or like one guy I had on I'm a Catholic and he was like I pray the rosary every morning and I've been thinking about doing that and I was like I'm going to do that too. And then it's been like four years in a row of me doing that almost every morning and you know, I'm just changing my life in a positive way. And then I started guesting on shows like this because I felt like I had more to share, just as sort of a public figure and, you know, getting to like the second seven years of everything, to like the second seven years of everything. So it's just been like remarkably positive, even though downloads go up and down. And it's not so much about that. I think it's about networking, getting to know people, and you start to. You just keep growing every single time you do an interview, whether it's with somebody like you or I'm hosting one, or even if it's just me and Al talking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome, that's really cool and we are a podcast generation. I would say we're probably around a similar age and I caught that Tom Green documentary too and it's special. I got a mule, which is awesome. Yeah, it was really cool hearing like the switchboard that he had and he was a really early adopter and without Tom Green, there's no Joe Rogan and dude it like.
Speaker 3:I was just so reminded about how much I love that guy and when I was watching that I was like, oh what I just, yeah, I. We used to do Tom Green videos, me and my buddies. You know it was hilarious.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I, he was outstanding, so that's cool that we both saw that. So, um, let's talk about longmont community gardens and share a little bit about that. And and I'm particularly interested in there are there are often times when you're presented with a idea that's outside of your core business and it may be something great like a community garden and but it also can take up some time in real estate from your core focus, and so can you talk about that venture and how that pairs up with running a business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know I've been trying to put into the ether what if we rephrased instead of work-life balance, what if we aim for a work-life harmony? And it just sounds better to me, because when I hear balance, it's like an image of a scale pops up in my head and I go, oh, I'm trading one for the other and it's like what about a balance? So the reason I'm starting the answer in that way is I this summer, this last summer girl I was dating she's an architect too and she asked me one night how did my day go? And I told her and here is my day. My day was I came over to the office and it had some staff meetings and then I jumped on my mountain bike with my backpack and I went and visited both my gardens and harvested vegetables and then I went back to the house and made a salad from the garden and then I went back to the office and then I went and that was my day. It was like a beautiful, harmonious day, like it was everything.
Speaker 3:And I'm an entrepreneur who's self-employed, so I can do that kind of, have that kind of flexibility. But that's kind of how it's been with the garden, because I will have my architects. We volunteer some of their time to do some of the design work in leading up to going after the grant that we just got awarded last year with the USDA. It was $86,000. We were able to double the size of the community garden, actually create a whole nother community garden in town. My carpenters end up helping we donate some of their time and they end up helping fill the beds and make the raised beds and all that kind of good stuff. And then just all my skills just of being an architect, a builder, a developer, somebody who's well read and written, they can go after those grants and get them. That's it's actually been really seamless. It's a lot of work for sure, especially since I've been drinking water from a fire hose lately trying to finish up the expansions as we head into gardening season.
Speaker 3:And then overall, it's always been my goal to be a good capitalist, not one that just is concentrated purely on profit for sake of profit, but like profit for sake of people too. And this was one of my ways of giving back to the community. That like helped grow me and grow F9 and embraced us, and that's really what Longmont Community Gardens has sort of become. So I, just when I got approached to take over the gardens in 2020, I'd been gardening there for about 10 years and the original nonprofit said hey, how do you feel about taking over? I go, this is what I wanted. The whole time is my own nonprofit. So it was just went hand in hand and I mean, I was already primed to do it as an entrepreneur. The paperwork was easy to me. Everybody else it was intimidating. I was like no, no, no, I got this, so that's how it's been.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's awesome, all right. Well, this has been an outstanding interview. At the end of every interview, we have something called the fire round. It's four questions we ask every guest Are you ready for the fire round? Yes, sir, outstanding, what is your?
Speaker 3:favorite book, marcus Aurelius's Meditations.
Speaker 2:All right. What are your hobbies? Fishing, I'm addicted. Very nice. What is one thing you do not miss about working for the man?
Speaker 3:Oh man being subject to their poor decisions.
Speaker 2:And final question what is one thing that sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started Discipline.
Speaker 3:Discipline equals freedom.
Speaker 2:I like it, jocko, very good, very good. Well, lance, thank you so much for your time today and looking forward to staying in touch. Yeah, thanks, david. Thanks for having me on.
