Building Success with Lance Cayko: Leadership, Discipline, and Growth

What if you could turn your life around, from a manual laborer to a thriving business owner? What if your passion for helping others and your knack for leadership could propel you to heights you never dreamed of? Join me as I sit down with Lance Cayko, a serial entrepreneur whose journey is nothing short of inspiring. Lance's story, from his days as a farmhand to co-founding successful architecture and construction firms, is a testament to the power of hard work, discipline, and recognizing the strengths of others.

Lance's insights into leadership and personal growth can provide invaluable lessons for any aspiring entrepreneur. His partnership with Alex Gore, based on their complementary skill sets, has helped launch their business to new heights. But it's not just about the business. Lance brings in his own experiences, his faith, and the wisdom gleaned from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations to highlight the importance of stoicism and empathy in leadership.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by a daunting task, Lance's approach to discipline might just revolutionize your routine. He emphasizes the value of early morning hours and the freedom that comes with discipline. We also discuss the concept of the 'white paper' and how structure can make any intimidating task manageable. Moreover, Lance’s unshakeable faith, his drive to pass on his stories to his children, and his commitment to empathy form the heart of our conversation. Get ready to reshape your understanding of leadership, discipline, and personal growth with this enlightening episode!

Check out Alex's podcast at https://www.insidethefirmpodcast.com

Chapters

• 0:02 Leadership Podcast With Lance Sycho
• 12:30 Leadership and Growth Through Challenges
• 22:41 Discipline and Freedom in Daily Routine
• 34:21 Leadership and Abundance Mentality
• 41:00 Lessons on Faith, Mistakes, and Empathy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Speaker 2: 0:17

Hey, it's William and welcome to today's episode of the Catalytic Leadership Podcast. Each week, we tackle a topic related to the field of leadership. My goal is to ensure that you have actionable steps you can take from each episode to grow in your own leadership. Growth doesn't just happen. My goal is to help you become intentional about it. Each week, we spotlight leaders from a variety of fields, organizations and locations. My goal is for you to see that leaders can be catalytic, no matter where they are or what they lead. I draw inspiration from the stories and journeys of these leaders, and I hear from many of you that you do too. Let's jump into today's interview. I'm so excited to have Lance Sycho on the show today.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Lance is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of wildly successful architecture and construction firms in Northern Colorado. His career spans over two decades in architecture, engineering and the construction industries and includes several design awards. He co-founded F9 Productions, his architecture firm, in 2009, with his business partner, alex Gore, after being laid off from a boutique firm in Boulder during the Great Recession. Since its inception, the partners have grown F9 from two employees grossing less than six figures to a team of eleven. They operate out of their brand new custom-built office that they designed and built and developed in Longmont. This year they earned the number one spot in tier three of Bis West Mercury's 100 fastest growing private firms, blowing out the competition with.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Get this a 386% growth rate. That is not a mistake. When he's not doing any of this stuff, he's managing a community garden in Longmont, which he's now turning into a formal nonprofit. In addition, he teaches part-time at the University of Colorado, boulder and co-hosts one of the top five architecture and business podcasts in the world Inside the Firm Man. Lance, i'm so excited about this conversation. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 3: 2:30

Thank you so much for having me and for the wonderful intro. I am flattered that all of those things were said. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 2:37

I'm amazed that all those things are true. I can't wait to dive in and hear more about your stories. Let's start there. I'd love for you to share some of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Speaker 3: 2:52

Oh gosh, my story starts with actually, i'm 40 years old as of today, starting back at 13, though when I was 13 years old, that's actually when, technically, my story starts, because I think there was something profound that needed to happen. I tried farming with my dad once I grew up, between a sugar beet farm and a cattle ranch, and on the sugar beet farm we did a lot of irrigation by hand. We were the poorer farmers than guys who had the automatic sprinklers and all that sort of thing. I tried it with my dad for about a week and that's all the further I lasted. It wasn't because I didn't like hard work. I am definitely a person who obviously can't do the things I do unless you appreciate and do hard work in our efficient and everything like that. But it was just not for me. My dad and I didn't get along very well at that point in my life And if anybody's ever been to Northwest North Dakota in the summer, the mosquitoes will literally pick you up and carry you away. It is just brutal. So, with the tension of not getting along with him, i didn't really like the work. The hours were crazy. I had to wake up in the middle of the night to have this stuff go, change water and everything. And I said, hey, this just is not for me, but I can do this. And he says, well, you got to do something. I mean, i'm not here to raise kids who don't have skills and have a good Protestant work ethic and all of that sort of stuff. So I called his best friend, bruce up, and his best friend was the general contractor And I said, hey, bruce, i'm willing to do anything. I've always wanted to try a construction. And I said, do you have any openings? And he goes sure, you can be my gopher. And I said, oh cool, what's that? And he goes you can go for this, you can go for that. When you're done going for the stuff, then you can come up on the roof and learn how to roof. We're going to do 80 roofs this summer. We're going to have them torn off by 10 am. We're going to start at 5 am. We're going to have them put back on by 2 or 3 pm And you're, and I'll pay a 725 an hour. I was the best gopher he ever had. I just hustled so hard. I really enjoyed the physical work in that kind of capacity. I mean we weren't waking up in the middle of the night. I love getting dirty, i love seeing all the progress throughout the day. And then I learned all basically how to do a roof that summer, like I could. I could do a basic residential roof by the end of the summer, about the middle of the summer I can't remember if it was a lunch break or something like that Or I was just riding around with him one day in between jobs or something, And he said how much do you think I, how much do you think I charge the customers, lance?

Speaker 3: 5:10

And he was trying to teach me a lesson And because he saw, out of all the people that he ever really hired, you know, i was, i was young and had a good head on my shoulders And I think he wanted to make sure that at some point in his life he passed on what he knew in some kind of capacity to somebody and that he made a difference, that sort of way. And he said So what do you think I charge the customers for one hour of your labor? And I said Well, you're paying me 725, so 725, right. And he was like No, and he laughed and I and I knew, and I he goes. Well, here's how it works. He's like I usually charge, you know, your labor three or four times. I charge a customer, whatever that is. And he said Because I got to pay taxes, i got to pay insurance, i got to pay for all of you overhead, i got to pay you whatever's left over. That's called profit And that's my incentive for employing people. Taking the risk And all of that's my reward. And taking the risk, i get the reward And I and that was very profound for me It really clicked.

Speaker 3: 6:06

And because my dad is not entrepreneurial at all, my mother is not entrepreneurial at all. They are just folks that are, you know, dedicated. God bless them. My mom's still working at the same as a dental assistant, in the same office that she has for 40 years, that type of thing, and I appreciate that kind of stability. But they would have never taught me any entrepreneurial stuff. They're not big risk takers or anything like that.

Speaker 3: 6:27

And the other thing that coupled with that was I saw Bruce's lifestyle. I'm not saying he was extravagant, but he definitely didn't seem to worry about money. If he wanted something, he went out and got it. Whether it was something big or something small, it seemed like there was money to go around. It seemed like his kids would get sort of what they wanted generally Like there was. I just didn't get any sense of anxiety, same kind of anxiety that I experienced growing up in a house where money was an issue, for example. So when I was like 14, i think, or 15, so within this timeframe, my aunt gifted me a computer because she thought I should have a computer. Guys growing up And I'm old enough to remember those AOL CDs that would come in the mail and actually use them right, and I didn't understand that, even though we lived in Trenton, north Dakota, which was Northwest North Dakota, that I had to, i had to dial up with the modem to Fargo.

Speaker 3: 7:19

I thought this is the internet, so I get you know. I didn't even think that it would be long distance. Month later a bill shows up. Mama, dad, are completely freaked out. It was only a thousand dollars and you do the inflation now, and then maybe, maybe it got up to two thousand. now with all the inflation, right, we printed all the money and everything like that.

Speaker 3: 7:36

Yeah, but still the the amount of Anxiousness and anxiety and trouble that that one thing caused made me to, made me maybe go. I never want to feel like this when I'm out of my own. I never want my children to feel like this Sure, i'm gonna reprimand them when they cost me extra money that they shouldn't have. You know, they're texting and driving in a record car or whatever, so that when you couple all that together, that's that's where I see everything started to click for me. So then then I look back to Bruce and I said, well, he's a general contractor, so he knows he can do almost everything. It seems like concrete foundations, raming windows, all all the sort of tasks that there are in construction, and I thought, well, that's what I'm gonna be, like Bruce then, like that's. It seems like that's the way towards not being Anxious about money anymore, and so I may. I dedicated myself then every single summer up until I was 18 Or about 20 actually, i would try to work a different trade. So I would do foundations one summer, then I would do framing another summer and I would just you finish carpentry to try to round myself Graduated high school, sort of as a low Honor student barely got honors type of thing.

Speaker 3: 8:47

I just didn't apply myself. I had a very. I had a very. I had a good ACT score. I had a test that is a high IQ person when I was young. You know 130 something, but I just didn't apply myself because Graduating with the class of 20 and in a town of 500 people like you don't have much choice to do anything. And then I'm such a person who only really thrives when I have choice and I have freedom to choose like that. That's, i think, where the innate leadership Comes from in me, in that sort of way. So, but everybody was going to school. So I graduated.

Speaker 3: 9:17

I had good enough grades to at least get into and get some scholarships and get into North Dakota State School of Science and I thought I'll go for two years for a trade. I will. Basically it went for building construction technology. They basically teach you how to be a general contractor, like a smaller level, one class B level, need to do small commercial, residential stuff, and I, for the first time, completely, 100% excelled. I was on the Dean's list every single semester and it was like, oh yeah, because you have the choice lands, i figured out how to monetize going to school. I'm a net federally registered Native American. If you are a federally registered Native American even today and you apply yourself academically, skies the limit in terms of Scholarships, opportunity, getting into college, i mean it really is. You know there's a lot of negative stuff I don't like about affirmative action, but for people who actually take advantage of it it 100% works for those kind of folks and I'm a product of that. For sure I took advantage of it. Most people I know that I grew up didn't and, and I got to the end of my two-year stint in North Dakota State School of Science And then the truth Factor started coming out inside of me.

Speaker 3: 10:22

I'm just very much Into the truth. So, you know, one of my favorite Bible verses is you know the truth shall shut you, so shut you free. And I just really live by that. And so What? and I got to the blueprints and at the end, where capstone project was, we had to build a house. And I started looking at these blueprints by these architects and I started thinking, like man, like why did they draw it like this? Like what? I want to know what, the, what, the factors were for them to make their decisions about why they drew this? like why, why, why, why, why. And then, at the same time, i started putting it together and I go like, hmm, i really like school. I figured out how to monetize going to school Suddenly and I have no obligations to anybody else right now. I don't have any children, i don't have any, i don't have a serious girlfriend. I kind of just want to keep going to school. What if I applied 70 miles north and went to North Dakota State and Try to be an architect? and so I applied there, got accepted for three in the freshman class of 350 students by the sophomore year gets paired down to 50 people. I made it into that and then the same sort of trajectory Happened with with all of that.

Speaker 3: 11:35

I'm the first born too, out of even you know, the, the half brother and half sister that I found later on in life at 33, and I'm the older brother to my Technically half brother that I grew up with, who I thought was my full brother all the time. So you know, firstborns are always just naturally leaders. I was always that sort of friend and and of people growing up of like the captain on the basketball team or I would be planning the parties or I would be organizing, you know, hangouts with the girls, with the guys, that sort of thing. I just had a there's. The natural leadership came out through that. And then when you get to when I got to college in North Dakota State, same sort of thing happened Is there was like in our third year We had this design competition We had to do and I was leading that design group and I saw this is where I met my business partner, then I co-lead everything with.

Speaker 3: 12:30

So, even though I'm, you know, very type a, very a, to be very linear Much more of an engineer than kind of an architect in terms of the way my brain works, what I reckon we were both doing these design competitions together or it is separately in different groups, and we saw the leadership qualities that each that we each person had me and me versus Alex and It really clicked to us once we saw, like both those independently, when we're leading those other groups, it really wasn't working in that well and it was because of I think there was not People filling the gaps of what other every the other person had or didn't have. And when Alex and I recognized that We did, we said, okay, there's the next competition that happens is in fourth year. Let's do the skyscraper competition together and we'll basically co-lead it. So I would say, to sum it all up as far as where the leadership comes, where the leadership, how the leadership happens now, is.

Speaker 3: 13:27

I've I'm just so blessed and so lucky to have been able to find my business partner, alex Gore, who is basically my brother at this point, without being blood, and That we are strong and, at same time, humble enough to Recognize the strengths that I have versus the weaknesses that he has, and vice versa, and we fill those gaps. Sometimes I'm the good cop, sometimes She's the bad cop, and we really keep building on each other. So you know, if you go to our website on f9 productions, dot-com and you take a look at our principles and how we try to run the firm, we have nine different principles. We you know that for I'm putting that as an example of like that was owls Initial draft, his, his, it was his idea like we should take this f9, which is took something totally different of why we would call it f9 and we should come up with nine principles of how we're going to run this operation.

Speaker 3: 14:23

And you know he draft, draft it up and I go oh, this is amazing, let me layer on my stuff. And what that ends up doing is like through our dual leadership, we just continually level up because, again, we're strong enough, yet humble enough to recognize, like, yes, how you might have a good initial idea, i can make it better, or vice versa, and and that's how we operate I love so many components of your story and how You know.

Speaker 2: 14:50

You really illustrate something that I teach all the time, which is that there is no such thing as a wasted experience. I Mean every part of your story. Even the parts that you wouldn't have picked or chosen or anticipated, Have all contributed to make you the Lance that you are today.

Speaker 3: 15:08

Yeah, 100%. I've had the most recent sort of epiphany and outlook that I've had in the last, i would say, two years, and I'm really glad that it's happening at the age of 40 again, because I feel like if you live a life like I am trying to do, with all of the you know back to the intro you gave of me and how I'm trying to do all of these things, not to mention raise a family and then keep a very strong faith with God through the church is You live. If you try to live that kind of life and you stay away from the drugs and the drinking and all of those sort of things and live a life of positivity and fullness, in that way, you're going to live about four lives One until you're one to 20, 20 to 40, 40 to 60, 60 to 80, maybe I'll live to 100, who knows. And so that's the biggest lesson, though I've learned at the back to the right now in the last two years was like I always had a premonition that this was kind of the case because I would just I believe in providence. I believe that, like even the negative stuff has, there's a reason for it. Like God planned that negative thing I had to go through that fire to then come out, you know, stronger at the end of the day. Right And like. The analogy I always like to make is a diamond gets created through pressure. Like you have to have a ton of pressure on this substance in order to make the diamond happen. Same thing with, like a pearl right, there's a lot of pressure and time that happens for all of that. So last summer and I'm going to read it again I'm going to start reading it again on the hiking trail. I think I'm going to start this Saturday, actually, because I would just The book title keeps coming up over and over again and that is Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.

Speaker 3: 16:51

I think every person should read it 100%, but I think, specifically young men should be reading that book at least once in their lives, and I think they should do it a couple times. You know, maybe they do it in their first life and their second life and their third life and their fourth life. As I mentioned, what that book taught me was, first of all, to remove the preconception. That's something that I'm always surprised about, like, oh wow, i had that preconception. My preconception with it was So the title is Meditations and I thought, oh yeah, so this will be like. And then it's all about Stoicism. And I thought, oh, stoicism. Stoicism is about me just not saying anything, right, just pausing, just looking stoic. I have no emotions and it's not at all what Stoicism is.

Speaker 3: 17:34

Stoicism once you read that book, as you understand, is a big part of being a man, especially if you are in my industry, like a construction industry, which is primarily done by men, is one of the most dangerous jobs out there. If it wasn't for us, the civilized world would just not exist. It's completely, 100%, factually, objectively true. When you're in the construction industry, your whole day is chaos. Even if you wake up very early, like me, four or five, and you try to get ahead of the world, your day is chaos. You're bringing order to the world. You're literally making something out of nothing. If you think of the earth as chaos and that space undefined by walls and roofs is chaos, then the art of construction is bringing order to that chaos right.

Speaker 3: 18:24

The parallel with that book is that the other way to think about and this ties into sort of Jordan Peterson's thinking of like chaos is the unknown right, chaos is the negativity, order is the known and the positivity right. So when you're thrown into that chaos in the negative part, what you have to do is if you're trying to be a stoic is recognizing that the negativity is good. It's good because of physics, every time there's a negative, there's something negative happens. If you can't have electricity work unless there's a negative and a positive right. So I get excited now, actually, no matter how devastating it might seem at the time, there's a part of me now that sort of has like a little flame will like metaphorically, grow in my mind or my brain or in my gut or my heart when something negative happens, because they go like oh, something positive is going to happen now, like this is really interesting.

Speaker 3: 19:21

I actually get a little bit nervous if it's just pure positivity And I try to make this an analogy too with my children. I made it the other day, i think after mass is obviously like guys, like you know, they were complaining about this or that. And then I go just think about when you push a swing, right, let's just pretend like we push the swing and the swing is going away from us in a negative way, right, it's going to come back to us in a positive way. I was like this is how it works in life And if you can understand that and own that and keep the faith and keep the, keep the positivity just in your mind and knowing that, like this negativity and this negative thing that happened is actually a positive, because somebody's trying to teach me a lesson, there's a reason for it, it's not just random.

Speaker 2: 20:07

So true. You know that's one of the things I wrote down the first time we talked lens, When you said every time there's a negative in my life, the positive outweighs it, every single time. I don't know that I've ever heard anybody put it quite like that, and it intrigued me, and I listened to you talk about it again today. It really reinforces a concept that I'm sure you're familiar with and maybe some of our listeners are as well This idea that you want to focus on what you want more of right. What you focus on is what you're going to see. If you focus on what's going wrong, guess what you're going to see in your life. You're going to see everything is going wrong and you're going to see more and more and more of that. Alternatively, if you focus on the wins, if you focus on the positive, you focus on what's going right. Guess what you're going to see and recognize more of. You're going to see more wins, and this is one thing I challenge leaders with consistently is you need to keep a wins journal. You need to be writing down the positives, the wins that are going on in your life and keep that going And every week, add to it, because over time. You're going to build a knowledge bank, a database right In this journal, that when you do have a hard day, when you do have the negative hits, you can dive into that knowledge base. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm struggling wondering can I do this? Is it worth it, all these questions that begin to surface in the middle of negativity. You've got a knowledge base you can go back to Wait. A minute. No, there's that That win, that win, that win, and all of a sudden it puts you right back where you want to be.

Speaker 2: 21:39

I love that And I'm so excited that you shared that, because that was one of the things I wanted to dive into today. Let's talk about that perception of the world, and I see it in your body language. I see it every time you talk about this, like that's part of who you are, that's part of your core. You talk a lot about discipline And this is a theme, i think, in your story The discipline that you had starting from the time when you're like I don't want to do this. You picked up the phone. Like your dad didn't pick up the phone for you to call his friend, you did that. Why do you believe discipline equals freedom?

Speaker 3: 22:16

Oh, i love, I love the phrase discipline equals freedom. I think about it almost every single day in some sort of capacity. I'm sure my children are tired of hearing me And I'm like it's so true, but they but, they see it, they believe it. Right, because I usually make them read, each read, one book a summer, per summer, and then Right up, right a book report for dad and I pay him to do it. Actually, they've seen the, the rewards happen.

Speaker 3: 22:41

I try to be when I can do that very hand-to-mouth start of stuff and to basically give them a Freudian effect if, so to speak. Right, yeah, so discipline equals freedom to me, because you are again sort of back to this idea of chaos, right, if, if, repetition through the discipline 100% equals the freedom. So what it boils down to and I guess what I like to do is I like to maybe just tell the audience about how I start my day and Then how that leads, ends up to the freedom. So I'm very disciplined, or at least I try to be Early to bed. No drinks before bed. I maybe will only have a drink. We'd be once a month type of thing anyway, and it's got to be like a very special occasion. So I know that, like I'm not gonna have alcohol or any other kind of substance in in my body that doesn't allow me to sleep Properly, so early, early to bed. I'm talking like 9 pm Type of stuff, early to rise and and really stick to that Routine, no matter how enticing the Netflix show is on the television. I tried to stay disciplined right there and shut it off at 9, keep the routine going and then wake up and then I start my morning routine and for me what it is is, you know, waking up around 4 or 5 and And starting off with getting a pot of coffee going. While the pot of coffee is going takes about 15 minutes, but every single time for my coffee maker is then I concentrate on meditation and praying and stretching at about the same time. So I'm trying to, i'm trying to talk to God, i'm trying to talk to my inner self and recognize, you know, some negativity that comes up And then make it go away through sort of meditation exercises. And then I'm stretching super hard because I want to be, i want to be 60 years old and once I have grandchildren, to be able to hike up and down the mountains with those people and I'll be able to do that through the discipline of like. Every day I stretch, like without a doubt I have that's what I'm never gonna let go of that Time to start taking care of yourself at 40. I'm done with that.

Speaker 3: 24:45

Then it's time to start cranking through the coffee and be disciplined with tackling and emphasizing my golden couple hours in the morning. I've sort of tried to coin this idea now of like that morning From 5 to 7, 7, 30. If you're an entrepreneur like me, or even if you're actually, if you're just working for somebody else And you're trying to become an entrepreneur, you're trying to do some creative stuff on the side, to where you can break free and and then get your freedom through. That kind of sort of Discipline is like those are the golden hours. From 5 to 7 am, most people are asleep in the world. Most people are not doing business throughout the world and you care or you know whatever times on your end and your world. That's when you know the caffeine can start flowing. If you're not a coverage or that's totally cool too, but your mind is going to be most malleable and Energetic then it's the beginning of the day and that's always where I get the most creative stuff done, whether it's Writing blogs for the website to try to gain traffic, trying to get on Now shows or podcasts like this, trying to get guests on our podcast like this, different business ideas. If we're doing design work, that I know is going to be very mentally taxing. Reviewing others work, that's that I need to be as sharp as possible with that. So I'm disciplined and I really try to not miss those kind of golden mornings. If I don't, if I, if I don't miss that most morning mornings and I follow through with that, by the time everybody Gets up at 7, 30 and 8, i'm already ahead of them. So they're not pulling me in any directions. Right, if they were pulling me in the directions, i wouldn't be free anymore. My day wouldn't be free. I'm pulling them. So through that discipline, that's how my day is starting off being being free.

Speaker 3: 26:32

The other big thing, too, is I think this was one of the biggest misconceptions that I had in design school is It's very daunting. So anybody who's in does any kind of artistic stuff. It doesn't matter like a right. You could be writing, you could be drawing something, you could be designing something. We've all we've all got the metaphorical and literal white paper in our head, right, this idea that, like the white piece of paper, is Intimidating. It's super intimidating right before that, right, the way to tackle that is When you, when you're disciplined with a whatever kind of structure you're giving yourself, you have to have some structure and a framework to work within and Some boundaries, which sounds counterintuitive, right? But if you have that, if you have those things defined, all of a sudden, maybe it isn't a blank sheet of paper, maybe, maybe, maybe, then at that point it isn't daunting because you're just basically going into the abyss.

Speaker 3: 27:26

So you know, for example, if I was to design a brand new house from scratch and Which one, you know which one would be harder, right, i have client a. Client a comes to me and they say just do whatever you want. That is, that is a scary proposition, right, and some architects might go like perfect, that's what I want. They might be, they might end up spinning their wheels and spending like an exorbitant amount of time and then there, then they're a slave to this Unknown. Right, they're not free in that category.

Speaker 3: 27:55

That client B comes to me and they say here's, we're. Look, we chose you because you know you're an award-winning architect, or whatever. We really like this, this kind of a style. And Here's the spaces we want. And, if I can get them and work with them to write out a space program where we start with, like the basement, main floor and upper floor, we define what kind of spaces are going to go there, you know, oh, upper floor, we need two bedrooms. Main floor, we need kitchen, living, dining, powder room, that sort of thing. That's my framework then. Right, so now I don't have this blank sort I'm still gonna look at sort of a blank piece of paper and everything, but I have a framework. And now, because of within a framework, i'm not a slave to literally having too much freedom. All of a sudden I have the freedom to work within The framework.

Speaker 3: 28:40

So I think disciplining yourself in those sort of ways, the last big thing that I do, that I highly recommend anybody who wants to become a highly, highly productive person is I used to say, i used to say I schedule everything and I I kind of don't like that anymore because it's It's sort of. It just feels a little negative to me. And now what I've said is to say go and make appointments for everything and make appointments for myself. I make appointments for my children, make appointments for my wife, make appointments for my friends, i make appointments for all of my business stuff And so like, even when it comes down to myself is like, yeah, i made an appointment for myself, put it, put it in the calendar to get my ears cleaned every six weeks, to get my teeth cleaned every quarter, to stretch in the morning, right, those sorts of, to do the push-ups at 11 am.

Speaker 3: 29:26

I make sure I do it when I get the, when the little bell comes off, and that sort of thing. So, making appointments for yourself and being disciplined with them and not allow you you know that might seem like Rigid and overbearing on yourself and that sort of thing you do have to have a little bit flexibility. I'm not asking like, i'm not saying Scheduled or make an appointment to the point where you're like, okay, i'm gonna chop the carrots for one minute and then the onions and say, no, no, there is a little looser, but that kind of discipline will help you be free and be actually more available to two people.

Speaker 2: 30:01

Mmm, i love that you know the word that comes to mind when you talk about that. It's not negative at all. I think of it as intentional. I'm gonna be intentional while making sure that I've got time for what matters most. You know your own personal growth and development, right. Whether it's physically, whether it's mentally, however it is, you're your, your, your wife, your kids. You're gonna be intentional about those things because they matter. You're gonna be intentional about your business and and Looking at your business, like you've grown from two people, right, just you and Alex, i mean now to a staff of 11, a team of 11. Yeah, like looking back over that journey, are there, are there certain things, principles or keys that you think have just been fundamental To that success that you've seen over these years?

Speaker 3: 30:45

one of the ones I'll point out right away, and we'll go back to the negative part. I'm so glad We hired somebody who was older than us and It was a mistake on the standpoint of then. Just because they were older than us and more more Experienced than us in the profession, we just falsely assumed They would just be turnkey. We didn't need to train them at all in our systems. Wow, i'm so thankful for that negativity that happened. We did never really made a lot of money Working with that person. You know, maybe a small profit, maybe they paid for themselves and we got some nice built work done. But the biggest learning lesson from that was We have to have a training Schedule. We have to have a training Training in place, you know, a system in place, and so it really kicked us in a high gear of being disciplined with, no matter how experienced any new person is, who's coming into the architecture firm specifically, we are going to treat them like a ball of clay and we even tell them this during the interview or even after the. You know, we hire them and then we reemphasize this, what we said in the interview, which is We love that you have experience, we love that you know this piece of software, but we work within a framework and a system and that allows for all of us to be hyper productive and get those kind of profits that you talked about earlier and that kind of growth We're going to have. You go through our training so you see exactly how we want things done. It's going to take you about two to three days. We pay for it. That's going to be your first two to three days And setting the expectations there and getting everybody on the same page because they all start out the same again, no matter how much, how much experience or they have or anything like that, that's paid dividends.

Speaker 3: 32:33

Because then what happens is and one of the most profound things I think another business owner told me when I was young, and even this career Having F9 productions in the architecture company is named as Robert Wygan. I'll always be forever grateful for his advice. He was just so willing again to be this mentor. We literally work for him. I mean he would, we would subcontract out from him is his company is Sumac, to design this, all this CAD work, and he's a lot of talent and raw ability with me. He liked the engineering analytical side of things because we were doing highly I highly sophisticated models that would flex and do all these other things. And he took me under his wing, basically as an entrepreneur, a young entrepreneur, and said Lance, if you ever want to grow Because you're going to hit a plateau if you don't, if you don't ever multiply, you have to figure out how to replace yourself. You have to be a big enough of a man and a person to be comfortable with letting go of some things and replacing yourself and replicating yourself, and that's where the training comes in.

Speaker 3: 33:30

So, and what we've seen happen since then is we have replaced ourselves in several different layers. Right, like we have me now are the owners, then there's senior staff, and then there's junior staff And then there's entry level staff. And what's beautiful is like when I will review a set of red lines that one of the senior staff gave to the junior staff I'm seeing a lot of replication happening And it feels more autopilotty than I think a lot of other architects, because they're not so much business folks. You know, they're business acumen. Really. They're more artists than anything like that. We like to think we're about half and half, so we're like a true building scientist and that sort of thing But that's been a really beautiful thing to see is the replication through the leadership, the discipline and all of those things. But it all started with that negative Like. I'm still so thankful that we were wrong and that we thought we didn't have to train this person.

Speaker 2: 34:29

What a great learning to take out of an experience that was not that great, because you're like, hey, there's no such thing as a way to experience. I'm going to learn from this. What can we do so we don't circle this particular drain again? You know, in our first conversation, one of the things that I jotted down because it really spoke to who you are and how you lead was you were telling me about, hey, this person, we just promoted them and they're doing this. And this person, we've been investing in them. We promoted them. You really believe in investing in the people who are on your team. You really believe in investing in them and rewarding when they step up and step out. Why does that matter so much to you?

Speaker 3: 35:08

You know I'm a contrarian. If I haven't given off that vibe yet, i'm just going to tell everybody that I am And so far it's served me well. I just don't believe in. I think I get nervous when there's like crowd behavior. I think there's so many instances in history where we see crowd behavior is actually probably more objectively detrimental to society as a whole, and so one of the crowd behaviors is basically that.

Speaker 3: 35:39

You're not that people that I'm seeing is that the loyalty between an employer and employee has broken down. Like my mom and dad, my mom, for instance, the one who worked for the as a dental assistant for 40 years, she's like a dying breed, right Yeah, the company man, the company woman you heard about this a lot right? Like, oh, they're going to work their whole lives, so they get the pension, they get that Rolex. At the end There's the retirement gift and that's where they're at. And employers, absolutely for sure, they've taken advantage of people enough to where then society's correction was job hopping and then the lack of loyalty and flipping the whole equation on its head, where the employee sort of wanted to take back a lot of the control about. If I jump from job to job to job. I keep getting a raise, keep getting a raise, keep getting a raise. Instead of like a 5% raise per year, i'm getting like, oh, i went up 10, 20, 30, whatever huge severance or huge different bonuses and all of that sort of stuff. So what we've tried to do is we've tried to always give bigger bonuses every single year, if we can, through all of our different ways that we try to make the firm more efficient every single day. And then the other thing we try to do is like when the inflation really started to hit most recently is we were giving between 10 and 20% raises, and some of them were surprise raises, and we just try to stay ahead of the curve with that. And the biggest thing, though, that I try to do is like I'm comfortable being.

Speaker 3: 37:11

I love that we're a young firm, but we're still young. I mean, we've only been around. Let's see, would have been 14 years so far In an architect's life. I'm still a baby. Like I was trying to explain to my wife the other day. She's like nobody's going to care about your awards when you get them after 40. And I'm like, oh, you've never heard about the Pritzker Architecture Award. Like those guys don't get it. Those guys and gals don't get it until they're 70 or 80. Like I'm a baby at this point still, and why I like that still.

Speaker 3: 37:38

And people could even and maybe they're even thinking, oh, you're pointing out a negative here, lance is that we have a huge runway to still go on, to still take off from giant. Like most men are not even in their best earning years until they hit 40, and then they 40 to 45, like it's statistically true. So like I was just so optimistic about it And I'm like, oh my God, I'm so glad that we actually got laid off when we did. We could start this firm so early. We took a huge risk, we succeeded in all of that And I want to replicate that sort of that feeling that there is room for every employee that's here right now at F9.

Speaker 3: 38:18

I use the analogy of a runway and a ramp, all the time with them as I go. Like we are here. You can, you guys, the more responsibility you're willing to take on, the more reward we're going to get you give you the more. If you want more reward, aka more money, then I'm going to give you more responsibility. I go, the runway is yours. If you want to get on it. Get on it, and I don't think a lot of other architects or employers tell people that because there's an ego involved with it. If you got to let some of your ego die with that right Like I've already been blessed enough to, i've already. I've designed a, build a custom house with my wife. Most people in the world do not get to do that, let alone the pool of architects that get to do that is much smaller. I'm sitting in the building that you mentioned for our real estate development where our office is located. I got to design and build and now I am operating out of, like, my own custom building. A lot of even more or less people get to do that sort of thing. I've done award winning work and all of that.

Speaker 3: 39:16

I believe in abundance And I think that's at the crux of it. Right, genesis 128, right, be fruitful and multiply. I just refuse to live this life of scarcity. And when you have a mindset of abundance, then all of a sudden these employees are not adversaries. These employees are holy cow. We could multiply. We can just keep multiplying, like. If I give them more freedom and they're willing to accept the responsibility for the award, it's all going to be positive in the end.

Speaker 2: 39:45

I love that, man, and I think you're spot on. And so many leaders that I talk to organizational leaders, team leaders they don't have that abundance mentality, they don't have that mindset, and so what they are creating is the pause. Only so big, it's only so big. And my question, my first question when I hear that is why? Why is it only so big? Let's bake a bigger pie, let's get a bigger pan. It's a whole different way of looking at the world. I think that's why you are leading at a different level than so many of your peers, Because not only is that your mindset, but you are imparting that to the people that you lead, and I think that's something everybody listening can take and apply wherever they lead, no matter what they lead. I'm curious if you could go back knowing what you know now, if you could go back and talk to yourself as a 22, 23-year-old, what would you tell yourself?

Speaker 3: 40:45

I would reassure myself that everything is going to be okay and that you just need to trust the plan. You need to trust God's plan. He's going to put you through the fires. He's going to put you through the metaphorical fires. He's going to put you through the trials and tribulations. They're all tests. They're all lessons. Don't worry about it.

Speaker 3: 41:02

Worrying I can never remember the quote about worrying. I think it's something like the past is the past and the present is a gift, something like that. In other words, oh and the future is unknown. That's what it is. The past is past, the present is a gift, is a present, and then the future is unknown. And so, worrying about the past it's already past. Worrying about the future it's unknown. So that's where the faith factor comes in. and trusting that, that's what it would be for me, because some of the tests that God gave me were just, i mean, they're so extraordinary.

Speaker 3: 41:45

My first wife abandoned me and our children for three years. I had to raise them all on my own while we were starting this firm, while we had no money and all of that incredibly taxing, incredibly difficult. Then she tried to take them up to Montana with this guy who was just not the kind of person you want around your children and that sort of thing, stuff like that that I've experienced where I'm just like, oh man, but it's so hard to do that right. I mean, i tell my children this all the time. as I ask Kyler today, my oldest biological son, i asked him I go what do you think? the number one thing that your mom and dad, specifically your dad, what is your dad? I'm like, what do you think your dad if he could? just there's one thing that he would want you and almost every dad wants for their children like, what do you think they're expecting, what do you think they want? And he goes, well, probably just to say, yes, sir, and I'll do this and that. And I go, yeah, yeah, that's good. Like, please, please, trust me, kyler, like I'm not going to lead you to danger. So if I ask you to do something, just please do it, just, please do it, just, please do it right, we can argue about it later. that sort of thing. I go no, the number one thing that I think every dad wants their children to do and basically avoid is they wish that they would believe every dad wishes they, their children, would unequivocally believe their stories and their trials and their tribulations and their mistakes and that like, just believe me, guys, if you do X, y and Z, you will avoid the mistake I made. Please just trust me with it.

Speaker 3: 43:17

And they have to go out and make their own mistakes And you know it's apparent you need to. it's so hilarious watching them, right, because you watch, you're like, if they're a little in there, my business partner is two small children, three and five, and I'm like, isn't it crazy how you'll come downstairs and they'll be playing on the couch, for instance, wrestling, and it'd be like, hey, guys, you're going to fall. And then they. and then you're just like, and they do it again. And you're like, and then they do, and then you're like, told you guys, told you, guys, you're going to fall, like, please listen. And so they. so you know, you know they're certain, like you got to. you can't just be a. you can't nerf the whole world, right. You can't nerf the whole world, right. But yeah, that's, i'm just. I'm just been on that tip lately a lot.

Speaker 2: 44:02

I like that. You know, i think I think there there are a lot of mistakes we do have to make ourselves, Yeah, but I don't think I'm going to live long enough to make all the mistakes. Personally, what I'd like to do is learn how to avoid as many of the ditches as I can that other people have driven into, which is why I'm constantly reading, constantly listening, constantly learning, because if I can learn how to avoid even half of the ditches that I would drive into otherwise by listening to somebody else and their story, why would I not do that? That's going to help me to go farther. That's going to help me to go faster, because I don't have to figure out how to get out of the ditch I just drove into. I love them and I think that's something that you're right. I mean, i have two daughters and that is something I want for them. I want them to avoid some ditches, right? And so I do the same thing. I tell the stories. I'm like, hey, careful, careful. Yeah, i want them to listen, and sometimes they do.

Speaker 3: 44:56

Yeah, yeah, sometimes they do Exactly. Sometimes they do, and maybe that's, i think, probably with dads we have to be comfortable with, or moms, whatever is like sometimes they do. That's all you're going to get Like. You're not going to get most times Right, but hopefully the sometimes are the ones that are really helping them avoid catastrophe and all of that. It can't be overbearing. It just doesn't work because the reaction to the overbearing everybody knows. There's one thing you could think of as you're listening right now that your mom and dad did that. You're like I do the opposite because they did that so much.

Speaker 2: 45:32

Right, yeah, exactly right. In your journey learning, listening, growing. Is there a book that you have come across in your journey that has really made an impact on you that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening? If you can just read one book this summer, this is a book for you.

Speaker 3: 45:50

Yeah, i already mentioned Marcus Aurelius's meditations, but the other one that is really a good companion for that, i feel like, because it'll help you be stoic is train your empathy. I had this false premonition Again one of these sort of false premonitions in my head The whole time. I was a young man from 20 to 40 in my second life, growing thinking, yep, my ex-wife is right, yep, other people are right in my life. I have no empathy for people. They were confusing sympathy with empathy. I think this is a problem in America with the English language and it's sort of getting bastardized and sort of starting to meld together a little bit.

Speaker 3: 46:32

Empathy is way different I have. After reading that book I was like, oh my gosh, i'm really empathetic. Actually, i still agree I don't show a lot of sympathy, but I think it's because I see it's just the empathy part of it. All empathy is is the definition, not to do a web surveysum but what it is is you can put yourself in somebody else's shoes. You can't run businesses or have employees or have children or have a spouse if you actually That is and it's a successful relationship in any of those relationships, students if you don't have any empathy and you can't put yourself in their shoes and try to understand that perspective. When you can master that and really get it solidified is, all of a sudden, your emails and the way you talk to people and the way you negotiate with people is you're going to get more wins because everybody's going to win. That's what I think the big lesson about that. Those two books I just highly recommend everybody check out.

Speaker 2: 47:38

As we wrap up, if people walk away from this episode with one thing, what do you want that one thing to be?

Speaker 3: 47:46

Keep the faith, Know that everything happens for a reason. The negatives have the positive component for it, and just try to be as disciplined as possible. Your discipline can start tomorrow. It can start right after you're done listening to this episode. You can start opening up the G calendar, whatever calendar you're using, and you can start intentionally, like you said, making those appointments for yourself, which then makes it's a positive intention for you for everybody else. like that stuff can happen instantly. Just do it.

Speaker 2: 48:23

I know people listening are going to want to stay connected with you, Lance. Continue to learn from you. What is the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 3: 48:30

The number one best way is if they go to linkedincom and they type in L-A-N-C-E last name Psycho-C-A-Y-K-O Lance, psycho-c-a-y-k-o. Connect with me there. I will connect with almost anybody. If you're interested in listening to our podcast Inside the Firm podcast, specifically the Monday morning coffee episodes which air every Monday, we're interviewing business professionals like yourself or like me with a lot of this kind of positive energy, people that are super successful because they do the sort of disciplinary, self-disciplinary stuff that allows them to do all of these multitude of things. You can go to insidethephirmpodcastcom, you can find this on YouTube, you can find this on iTunes and all stuff like that. Those are the best ways to keep in touch and connect with us.

Speaker 2: 49:14

Thank you. You've been so generous today, just sharing from your experience so far. I can't wait to see what's going to happen next.

Speaker 3: 49:22

Thank you, brother. I really appreciate you having me on the show today. Your questions are wonderful and I'm always happy to give in any kind of way I can to the world.

Speaker 2: 49:31

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, i'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, i'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, i'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Speaker 2: 50:07

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20-plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. If you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, i'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Speaker 1: 50:53

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.