Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Okay, how about me.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Thoughts on why that is? But I'm sure you hope.
Question is, are you doing it massively or abundance? Like, it's. It's.
What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Frank after 40. Lance, welcome to the show.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, buddy.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. And in case anybody's wondering, Lance says his last name. Lance Psycho.
So I just want to make sure we got that correct before we got the podcast started.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. You have to. Right, everybody? Yeah, look, Frank leaned into the way I use it, which is like an icebreaker.
It's totally something to embrace. It took my kids almost until they were 20 to finally go, you're right, dad. Like, we should use this as an icebreaker. And nobody forgets our name. And then they leaned into it and they love it, but they hated it at first.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah. I've been thinking in the last five minutes how, you know, how would I have ever have come up with that pronunciation? And I. I could find Seiko and I said. I think I said Keiko. Or, you know, you could say Kaiko, but I would never have thought, you know, because you think of P.S. silent P and all that stuff. But that's interesting.
Anyway, what nationality is that, can I ask? Let's hear it.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's. It's originally Czechoslovakian, like Eastern Bloc, basically. And when my. When four or five generations ago moved, you know, came over on the boat, they tried to Americanize it. It used to be called. It used to be Chitiko. So it was a very, very Eastern block name is Chedaiko.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: And then they thought, oh, the American version should be Psycho.
Wow.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: That quick transition there.
Oh, my goodness, that's great.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Well, I'm excited today to get into some stuff that you're involved in, some stuff that I'm involved in, and get your take and your opinion.
Looks like we're going to have to talk fishing, so that'll be fun. Cool.
But, yeah, so for everybody who doesn't know you, let's. I do like to touch on early years. It's always been something that I've done on this show.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: But.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: But before we get into that, tell everybody a little bit about what you do and who you are so that they understand where we're going.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah. I'll start from the. From the top. Like, if anybody went and looked me up on LinkedIn, I'm the only one that spells my name that way. Right. So I'm like, if you Found me. You'd be like, oh, he has got a moniker of serial entrepreneur, architect, builder. And then my. My preferred pronouns are positive, reactionary.
Yeah. So it's. So that's the quickest way to describe what I do. And then there's a few other things that I. That I still do, too, which is like the fishing.
I have a YouTube channel, a newsbreak channel, and we get paid with sponsorships and people send us free stuff, and it's pretty cool. It's fishing with Lance, and I started that about four or five years ago. I had to take a big break from even fishing, anything like that, because at one point it was just like I had four children. They were all little.
You'd take them out, but not in the kind of way I wanted to and, you know, stuff like that. I also teach sometimes at two different universities. So I do. I'm an adjunct professor. Professor at North Dakota State, University of Colorado, Boulder. And then a philanthropist, too.
I have a nonprofit, and I'm very proud of it. I'm very. I'm doing. It's so much work, but it's so worth it. It's Longmont Community Gardens, and it's a. We just expanded and doubled the size of our gardening opportunities this last year after winning a $86,000 federal grant, then the USDA to do that in the. In the city that I live in, which is Longmont, Colorado. So I do a lot of stuff, but I've somehow fine timed. And then podcasting. You know, we have a podcast, too, inside the Firm podcast. And I do guesting on shows like yours, too, to just help spread the message about everything that we do. I felt like at the age of 40, I'd finally become a real adult man. I had positive things to share with folks, and I just like to put that energy out in the universe.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: I love that. I love it. I love that you stay busy. We're a little the same that way, so that's pretty cool.
So I really have. I have so many questions on everything you just said, actually. But let's. Let's kind of take the traditional route that we do here. Tell me a little bit about where you grew up, how you grew up. I'm just interested to know, was it anywhere near where you are now? What was family life like just before we get into, you know, current. Current days?
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I'm 42. When I was 13, I decided farming with my dad wasn't for me.
And I grew up in northwest North Dakota in between a cattle ranch and a sugar Beet farm. So I tried irrigating these sugar beets with dad. We were super poor farmers. We didn't have all of the fancy automatic sprinklers for our farm, so we had to do everything by hand. And we had to carry around these big tubes and we'd make our own ditches and dams and stuff like that. Very labor intense. You were working 24 hours around the clock. You'd get little naps here and there. And I didn't get along with my dad too well at that point in my life.
Lasted about a week. And I was like, this is just not what I'm interested in. This is not the path for me. And I could just feel it.
And so I preemptively got a replacement for myself, which was my best friend Chris. He was willing to do whatever, and I was just not. And I said, hey, this is not for me, dad.
I'm gonna call your best friend up. His name is Bruce, and he was a general contractor. And I always been interested in building, making things. I was a Lego kid growing up. I was always sketching. I tried to, like, I took shop classes.
And when I called Bruce, I said, hey, what do you got going on this summer? Like, I would love to just do whatever. I'll pick up garbage. And he goes, he'll be. He goes, you can be my gopher. I'll pay $7.25 an hour. And I was like, cool, what's a gopher? And he goes, well, when you go for. You're gonna go for all the things. You're gonna go for this, go for that.
When you're done going for the things, then you can get up on the roof and learn how to do what we're. What we do. I was the best go for you ever had, because that's all I needed to hear. I was like, oh, I want to learn how to like, roof. Like, I want a skill. Like, this is very appealing to me.
So I was on the roof a lot. I learned how to do the whole process.
We would wake up super early, five, six, have the half the roof torn off by 10am or we'd have the whole rooftop at 10:11am put it back on by 2 or 3pm, get off the roof. I just completely fell in love with the whole industry. Like, all the guys, the cat calling, you know, the typical construction stuff. Like, I just loved it. Bum and smokes from as a kid, you know, that kind of thing. And.
And then about halfway through the summer, Bruce, I think, saw something in me that he Just didn't see in the other guys because, you know, the other guys were like, maybe they had substance issues. You know, they're kind of a classic, like, grumpy construction worker sort of thing. Haggard is a way to describe them. And he just saw something different in me with the motivation, willingness to learn, all that. And I was a hard worker. He pulls me aside over at lunch, and he goes, I'm paying you $7.25 an hour. What do you think I'm paying? What do you think I'm charging the clients? And I go, $7.25 an hour. And he laughed and laughed. I think he knew that I was going to say that. And he goes, no, no, no, that's not how it works. And he goes, I'm charging. I'm charging them three to four times your labor. And I go, isn't that stealing? And he goes, no, no, no, no. And then he explained business to me. He explained how it works. He explained why you do that. All the profit, the overhead, the risk, the reward for being the entrepreneur, the fact that you're going to lose him money sometimes on jobs, all that stuff.
And that was the. One of the biggest light bulbs I've ever had in my life, because that was the first real entrepreneur that I ever met.
My mom and dad were not, you know, God bless them. Like, they had to do what they had to do to make sure we were fed. We never went without wanting generally.
So it was food on the table, roof overhead, you know, typical stuff.
But that was the first real entrepreneur that I met. And I Then I really started to notice the big difference between how what the relationship that Bruce had with money versus the dad who raised me.
And I didn't read the book Rich dad, poor dad until I was maybe mid-30s. But after I had read that book and I started to look backwards in time, I went, oh, my God, I had the rich dad, poor dad experience.
No wonder why it formed me in the way I did, you know, like the author of that book. It's exactly why he is the way he is, because he had that experience. And he went, like, I never want to have this anxiety relationship towards money. And that's what my dad, mom had raised me.
It wasn't that so much that we were poor, but it was definitely like, I remember one time I ran up a phone bill. Didn't mean to. I just didn't think it was long distance to get the Internet, but it was apparently like a thousand dollars. You would have thought World War II. We were on the brink of nuclear war. I mean, it was just like I was. They were just so upset about it. Right?
[00:09:05] Speaker B: And.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: And for me, let's say, even with inflation, that my. If one of my kids ran up a long distance bill, four or five thousand today, I just write the check, would I be mad at them? Yes. Would there be a lesson in them? Sure. But it wouldn't be this. It was like, again, nuclear war was happening. And then bro and then Bruce.
It wasn't so much that he was rich with all of these objects. It was just.
There was no anxiety about money. I was like, that's what I want. I want the freedom from money. So at the end of the summer, I asked Bruce, Bruce said, well, what do you want to do? And I go, I go, how do I become you? Like, how do I become a general contractor? I go, this is very appealing to me.
And he goes, oh, next summer you don't work for me.
And then again, in hindsight, I'm like, man, I'm as a. As a literal general contractor now, an architect, and all the other stuff that I do, employing people, I'm like, what a, like, brave and mature thing to say as a, as a guy. He's gonna let his best guy go. Essentially one of the most potential. Maybe you could have even handed the baton to me at some point, you know, me take ownership of the. I don't know. And he goes, go work for somebody every summer. You need to go work for a different trade now. And you need. Then you need to learn all this because that's how you become a general.
And I. And I did. So that's what I did from then 13 to 21, as I would try to go. And then Even from like 18 to 20, I went to tech school, North Dakota State School of Science of Wahpeton Building Construction Technology. They teach you how to be basically general, a class B general contractor.
And then the second light bulb went off when I was in my.
Would have been my last year there. Last semester, we had to build a house that was our capstone project with our team at North Dakota State School of Science. And they.
I started looking at the blueprints and this word architect popped into my head. And I was. Because it was the first time I was ever dealing with, like, real, real blueprints.
And I went, oh, yeah, the architect. Forgot about that, huh?
Well, if I became an architect first, I would actually get the client first, right? I could just turn it into a building client. I'm like, man, I could get paid two times and so and then I went oh yeah. Then I and I actually finally like school.
I was suddenly went from like a low B student in high school to a high A on the dean's list in. In tech school because I was finally getting to do what I wanted to do.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: So I applied to North Dakota State, 70 miles north, got accepted, accelerated through there. And then the third big light bulb went off there is then this word developer popped up in my because you know that's how it works is like you hear it often in architects. It's like because that's who you're working with a lot of develop real estate developers.
And I went wait a minute, wait a minute. Developer, what's that?
And they're like oh well they're the ones who actually end up hiring everybody.
Like they hire the architect, the builders.
Well that's actually what I want to be like. I should be all three.
So it took me a long time to get there. Graduated in 2008 to when we bought our first piece of land in 2017, almost a decade. But we did do that. In the building I'm recording from right now is our commercial unit which is part of a three plex and then we have a six plex behind us in which we retain two of those. And then became real estate investors essentially. And I live in one of the units.
But that says curses of a story as I could give you from now. From back then till now.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: No, I love it.
So let me ask you a question to jump off of the building piece for a second because I find you were with your dad on the farm. Even though you went the building route, you're now have a nonprofit that's tied with gardening.
Do you think that has any ties back to when you were working with your dad or is it completely unrelated?
[00:12:48] Speaker A: It's actually more Grandma. Grandma had the big garden.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Dad is still a very, very avid gardener. But I could not. It's like I couldn't. You can't take the, you can take the kid out the farm, but you can take the farm out the kid. It's exactly that, you know. So I got the North, I got the Colorado and I was had to live in an apartment for like five, six, seven years where we could afford to buy a house.
And I just found myself with all this free time after grad school going only having to work like you know, 40 hour week. I'm like instead of 80 to 100 in grad school and went yeah, I want to like teach my kids how to grow stuff. Like, I. That is very important to me for just from. From a health standpoint, outdoor standpoint, and then just teaching them and everything. And hopefully they'll carry on the baton. And one of my sons actually has. He's two of them actually. He's applying to all these garden jobs and everything. So it. For sure, you know, through proxy. A dad had a lot to do with that.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: So I'm curious.
You went and did all three.
Love it.
What was the difference? So you get all these certifications, let's call it, or degrees. Cause you finished school, I'm guessing.
What was the difference between getting the degree and then building a business that you have today or turning it into an actual business that you have today?
So you had to go and you had to find the client to do, be the architect for their plans and then, you know, build or be the developer. So walk me through that process of what you thought it was going to be like. What was it actually?
And the process to get to where you are today.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: I almost didn't even have time to think about it. That's what's crazy about it. Because it was a push to shove.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: Well, you said graduation in 2008, right?
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: That's when the GFC happened. So I'm interested to know also how that played a role in this story.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's. Thank you. Yeah. So graduated in 08. And my business partner and I, we're best friends in college. So we even went. We went separate ways.
We knew we were gonna go separate ways. He had the Big Apple on his brain. He's like, I gotta go to New York. It's the mecca between it and Chicago. It's the mecca of architecture in the. In the United States. Right.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Gotcha.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: And I was like, I'm a mountain guy. Like, I need my outdoors. Like, I grew up summering in western North Dakota. Grew up in. Every summer we'd go to like Idaho, Montana. I just had my heart set on it. Plus I had a. I had a wife and a child and another one on the way. And I was like, I'm not raising them in Manhattan. Like, that ain't. You know, that ain't even if we could afford it, like, not happening.
So we both, we both got internships, and we think they're probably one of the last ones in each respective place. We ended up. I ended up in Boulder, Colorado. He ended up in New York City.
And then we both got laid off. He got laid off first. He actually watched Manhattan. He watched from a high rise in Manhattan. He Watched Wall street meltdown, watched the guys come out of walls of the Wall street building, the trading center with all the stuff. I mean, it was shocking, right? He's texting me all this and I still haven't lost my job yet.
He's all, you know, dejected, sad or everything. Tried to find some other internships, couldn't do it. Decided he was going to, decided. He decided in his head, I'm going to go back to school for another master's construction management in North Dakota State.
Maybe this recession only be a year, then I get laid off.
And I knew the layoff was coming because of that. And you could just see the writing on the wall. And I was, I always paid attention to the markets and stuff and. But I had, I was working on getting some work lined up, knowing, like, I'm not going back to North Dakota. Like, well, we love Colorado, right? The weather, everything.
And so I put out Craigslist ads of all things. And I fell back on my handyman work, thank God. Like, thank God I had that backbone.
And I just tried to be the opposite. And that's where I was like the positive, reactionary, sort of punny pro, you know, preferred pronouns come into play. Is like every time that something negative happens to me, it took me about 40 years to figure this out and put a name to it. And it's like, oh, I'm experiencing a lot of polarity.
Something bad happens, some good is going to happen, has to. Can't have negative, can't have positive with you can't have, you can't have one mutually exclusive. Like you can't have electricity if there's not negative and positive. Like it's an actual law of physics, how it works, right?
So I always tried to be this positive reactionary to like negative that I would saw. And one of the first, one of the first ways it happened was with that Craigslist ad is like, I was like, oh, who are my competitors? Who am I competing against here?
And it was just old curmudgeony, kind of like those guys I was describing earlier. And I was like, I'm the opposite, right? I was like, ah. I would, I put, I, I would put on the Craigslist ad, tall, handsome, six foot one, sober, master's degree. Like, I was like, I know who I'm going to appeal to. It's going to be like a housewife or somebody like that. Somebody who just wants pleasant to come into their house.
And sure enough, I just had so much work lined up, I was able to work for cash for like, three or four months. Did not have to take out any unemployment insurance after I got laid off. And then I had also been doing all of this modeling online, not, like, in front of a camera, but, like, CAD modeling.
And I got the attention of this CFO of Turbo Squid, where I was putting all these, like, furniture models. She was like, hey, you're uploading more than anybody in the whole world right now. And I told her about my ambitions to do even more. And she was like, oh, my gosh. She's like, well, we have these big manufacturers coming online. They need to start making the transition from 2D CAD details over to these 3D BIM models. Would you be interested? And I go 100%.
So while I did all the handyman work, I kept on working in that capacity, keeping in touch, networking, and eventually landed the work. And that work ended up being a solid base for us to hang our shingle on. For about the first three or four years, we were mostly doing that, while we then started to again use Craigslist and these other guerrilla marketing strategies that all these other architects were not doing. They were just completely overlooking it.
And we started marketing just the opposite. It was so. It was actually like. That was probably the most shocking part of, for me to answer this question is like, that's.
That's. It was just a surprise that I was like, oh, wow, thank God these architects are so bad at business. And they still are. And that's actually why we ended up forming. The show is one of the primary reasons Inside the Firm podcast was like, we made it to year seven of F9. Most businesses fail within the first seven.
We got to year seven and went, we are here. Oh, my God. Like, this could maybe keep going. We beat the odds so far. We should tell our story because I just get so sick of the media beating down like, Gen Z millennials, even some of Gen X of, like, victimhood culture and the American dream is dead and entrepreneurship is dead. And it's like, I want as many entrepreneurs out there in society as we can get, because those people are the ones with the most skin in the game there. They can make the most change through the private sector.
And, yeah, so that's, I think, the way I would try to answer that question. It was just a big surprise.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really interesting. I hear that story and I take away activity breeds activity. And even though, yes, it was a little bit of good fortune for you, the only reason that good fortune came to you is because you were doing the work to advertise and put yourself out there. And so kudos to you. That's what I think. And so it's like, it's a little bit of both.
But that's awesome. That's an awesome story. So tell me about F9. Tell me what you guys are doing today and what do you think your business is built on? Is it mostly the architect piece? Is it all three equally building? What do you think you do all of. And what is it that you're building? That kind of. Tell me about that.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, so this would be our 15th year in existence.
It's like, I'm like, Finally the year 15 hit me. I'm like, whoa, dang. We're kind of there as far as established goes. You Google Colorado Architects, we're on the first page. We're punching right across everybody else. As a matter of fact, we're punching right at one of the guys who laid me off, which is pretty amazing. We've grown from two to nine architects. We're very happy with that size. We have two locations now, one in Longmont, one in Denver.
We keep winning awards.
And I would say, yes, architecture is. And us doing architecture is, is the base of what we do. Because we do. We're selective about who we'll build for. So we're. Because. And then it's a whole separate legal entity too. F14 Productions is our general contracting firm.
We have three criteria that every architecture project we bring into the firm must meet in order for us to decide if we're going to build for a client. Number one is like, we gotta like them. We're gonna extend that relationship for so long. When it kind of goes all the way back to that light bulb as I was like, oh, I get to interview them first. Like, oh, wow. What other builder gets to interview a potential client in depth and seeing high and low buttons happen throughout the design process and really get a feel for the temperature.
So they gotta meet. That second one is they gotta be within a 30 to 45 minute radius of our Longmont office. Cause I just, I gotta be able to get the job site.
It's never shocking. Like the surprises you find out. Right.
And then the third one is they gotta be, they gotta be cash financed.
Which is, I realize, is like, wow, Lance, you're really demanding that. It's like, I don't want to deal with a bank. I've. I've dealt with a bank before as a developer and I have built for other people who have the bank. And there are a lot of people who have the kind of cash that you need to get things done.
And it just makes the process go so much smoother. It's just so much better.
So that's. And then the real estate component, we did the one development and then what I learned from the development, and we did it between 2017 and 2020, because that's how long it takes the one year to design, one year for entitlements, one year to build. You know, it's a long process.
I got a little burnt out just in general.
And I also hit 40 at that age, about 40. So I had. I had my midlife crisis and then Covid was there and it was just like, no more developments for a while. And I also. What I learned also is like, ah, I really need to make sure I build up the construction firm and get more experience under our belt. Just so I just. So the whole process goes smoother and better on the next one. And so that's where we're at right now is I'm. We're on year six of F14 being in its existence, and we're about to hit year seven, so we'll be out of the startup phase. We've ran a lot of experience through the experiments at f14, and I think we've learned some. And then once that happens, I think we're ready for our next development after that in the next maybe three to five years.
And then we also want to change and pivot to different typologies. So. But the biggest thing though, with that also is at the base of F9 is customer service, which is a 100% reaction again, to all these other architects that think like, oh, I need to promote design first.
Everybody wants to hire me because I'm a good designer.
And it's like, nope, they want to hire you to solve their problems through high quality customer service.
So that's what we put at the forefront of what we do. And that's why we have 87 five star reviews on our Longmont location, 43 five star reviews in our Denver location. While we've been the Best of Mile High finalist three years in a row, winner of two for best in customer service in the whole state.
And everything falls into place after that. Like, if we're doing the fundamental customer service right, the design's gonna happen. That's what we're trained to do.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: So let's go with that for a second because a lot of the people that will listen to this are entrepreneurs.
And I always like to find out from someone who's had success in business how Much of your business comes from marketing. Obviously it's word of mouth and you're giving good customer service. I love that. That's always should be the base.
What else do you do and what do you find typically works for you and in this current condition.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Yeah. As far as getting those first clients.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Like marketing, what do you find works for you?
People today with social media and they're constantly doing. Some are doing social media, some are doing Google advertising, some are doing, you know, whatever. What do you find works for you besides good customer service?
[00:25:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
I'm so glad you asked about social media because we've tried that. We've tried the social media, the social media thing. We've.
Prior to three years ago, the previous three years to that we threw quite a bit of money at social media. We hired a social media manager, a firm even and they would, we were doing dual postings with, between. We were trying to establish ourselves an authority with the, with the podcast and that has worked. But you know, we would hit all the major platforms and there was, there was no return. There was almost no return. I mean it was pretty obvious. Right. And what we noticed is like so then during that time we didn't make enough cash to be able to hire a full fledged marketing term firm to redo the website, really focus on SEO and get us up to that first page of Google when you search Colorado architects, whatever.
So but I'm glad we went through that experiment of the social media because for us we realized like that's not where you get the clients. That's more of just establishing identity and authority and space, making sure you're sort of top of mind but to even track the metrics of how it works like for a service based business. Yeah. Especially architects, even the demographics of the people who that are using the social media platforms. It's like objectively true that like most of the wealthy people actually stay the heck off of social media because they're too busy doing all this, all the stuff. Right. Like even I do, I take, I don't have any notifications on my phone with any of the apps. I only use it to just.
I check when I want to.
The biggest, the biggest most recent media push and marketing that we've seen work for us is hiring somebody like Neil Patel. That's who our marketing firm is, Neil Patel. Agencies like to put it in perspective, they do Tucker Carlson stuff, they do target stuff, you know, so that's like a, you're playing with the big boys, big girls at that point and you, and you even have to apply to become one of their clients.
We've put a lot of money into the website and SEO in the past three years and that's been the biggest dividend payer for sure because now I am getting multiple calls per day while Al is at the same time getting multiple emails and contact there.
And it's outward. But the, but the biggest tweak compared that you look at at us compared to the other architects is we're not showcasing the portfolio. When you go to our landing page, it's how can we solve your problems? Hey, we're, we're architects. We're here to solve your problems with whatever building or you're doing.
And it, that's, that's how we're showing it. It's not, it's not pretty pictures of here's the pretty buildings. That comes later. Sure, that's like a default again that I think people are doing. So for us that's, that's what we've honed in on. But and we still do all the traditional stuff. We're still members of the Home Builders association. So I go network with people. I still do traditional networking and we'll reach out to realtors in the area. I go glad hand all of that stuff. I'm podcast. This is networking, this is outward. You, it increases people. Look up Lance, oh my gosh, he's on all these podcasts and everything else. He seems like an authority in the space. I trust that guy. I hired that guy.
But the social media, again, I'm not, I just can't be convinced of that one. I think for some people it works so good. I, because like the gal who just beat us for the best Mile High, she's killing it. She runs everything off her Instagram.
But the I, I, we, we can't market in the way she does with that because even the work she does is different. So.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Interesting though to know.
Tell me about what you're teaching.
What exactly are you teaching? You know, you're doing a bunch of different things.
How often you teach and what are you teaching?
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I didn't teach last semester, which is the first time I hadn't taught a semester in 13, 13 years.
And it was just because they discontinued the course. And I think it's a lot of it had to do with the rise of AI and all of these other competing platforms that my former students, which the former class was I was teaching the Adobe Creative Suite, so I was teaching Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, the whole thing.
And there's just so many competitors now. I think they're finding that like I'm not sure this is useful for our students.
And then prior to that it was design studios. So I would be, I would go out and be teaching design studios to architecture and engineering students.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: I gotcha.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: And infusing them with, with all of our practicing knowledge in the, in the higher ed.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: So I'm curious to ask your opinion on some things, some topics. So AI is really blowing up.
I'm interested to get your take especially directly related to either architecture, building and how you think that's going to be incorporated.
And then I want to talk a little bit about green building and how much you deal with that. Much more out there than we do out here. I'm on the east coast in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. So I think in different areas of the country it's probably bigger than in certain areas.
But I, but I'd love to talk a little bit about that too. But tell me about AI and are you seeing that involved in your practice? Are you using it? Where do you think it's going?
Just curious.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
Two, three years ago we had reached out to a coder because I, I chat GP just chatgpt just came on the, on the, on the horizon. It was like. And I started playing with it and I'm like this is. Whoa. Yeah.
And then you, you know, after you play with it a while you're like, ah, it's still not quite there. And then you move up to the pro grade, whatever. But, but, but it, it sparked an idea and I was like, gosh, what do we hate doing the most as architects? We hate doing like the menial drafting and just like, just like duplicating stuff. And it's kind of like digital paperwork. Like how can we get rid of that so we can spend more time doing the stuff we love on design? We reached out some to some coders and we tried to get them to write some script for us working with some different AIs and everything like that.
And we made some pretty good progress. But it wasn't, it was still what I was describing just a second ago. Like ah, it's still not quite there.
Where we've seen it really work so far is the visualization has gotten much quicker.
They be able to do these super high end renderings and iterations has been phenomenal. Like it's just phenomenal. Al and I the name F9 actually is the hotkey on the keyboard for 3DS Max. And that's what Al and I used to use.
To produce these super high quality photorealistic renderings that fooled people like that. It was built, built work.
And so we used to hit the F9 button. Right. And all we had when we started the firm was F9 Productions.
And so but. And they used to take. We would push that button, walk away from the computer, go to bed, wake up the next day, hopefully the renderings done.
This was even after like we would gang up computers together and have like yeah, eight process. It was crazy. And now it's like an hour. It's. Or less.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: I was if that. I got to believe it could be done way quicker than that.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Yeah, well it's an hour to like set up the rendering and get all the materials and then it's even quicker. You're right. Then it's like seconds because then you're like, oh, I have a working model. I can just almost instantaneously do the thing. Yeah, that, that's been huge. The biggest thing for me personally though, well, professionally personally is I am using ChatGPT and Grok Daily for writing. For writing.
The, the big thing that I learned in using it was though, like, I'm like, oh, I need to train it to know me. Which is kind of creepy, but it's part of the deal.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: True.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. And so I've had it. I've had, I've taken a lot of my like interviews like this podcast, other. Other podcasts that just al and I have done.
And then I have my own, you know, written bios and all this other stuff. And I, I took the podcast and like transcribed them so it could read.
And I've trained it and trained it and trained it and trained it. I've trained it to like our, our previous writing styles on the blogs that, on our website and stuff like that and projects and all kinds of stuff. And now I have like these little chat bots that perform specific things to me where I only have to feed in a little bit of data or just a question and it'll spit out and it's like I don't barely have to make any tweaks.
And the most, the most precise example I can give you at the end here is we just went for a special status in Denver.
I'm a Native American. And so we get these special statuses for like set aside work. So we're going after a special status and there's so much paperwork involved. You can imagine writing all these narratives and everything. It knew me so well. I was able to complete the application in like an hour or two. And I. One of my good friends who also went after this status. Her name is Rebecca.
She was just giving me nightmares leading up to us applying for it. Like, oh my God, it took me forever. It took me like months and whatever. And I told her how long it took and she's like, she almost slapped me. I was like, well, that's where we're at.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: It's amazing. And how, how much it can help.
It's really crazy.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: Tell me, tell me a little bit about green building.
You know, how, how do you, is it required where you are to include certain, you know, stuff to make sure it's so, so, you know, you add up, you know, points or percentages of the bill, that kind of stuff.
Tell me about out there in Colorado.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Yeah, Cali, you almost did it. Which would have been perfect because we are, we are Cali rado at this point. Yeah, close, close.
We are mini California in ways. Some ways we're even worse, honestly. Yeah. At worse. By draconian rules.
So by default.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: Well, you know, you know what tipped me off, by the way, made me think of California, because when you said when you started going through timelines, you're like, well, it takes a year to plan, a year to build. And I was like, I was like, holy cow, I wonder what they're building and designing. But anyway, go ahead. Sorry.
[00:36:06] Speaker A: Yeah, no, you're so right. It is, it's a more onerous, it's quicker out there, apparently, compared to here. The.
What I've. So what I. A lot, I get a lot of clients that come in and they'll go, they'll, they'll think we have to throw, we have to greenwash the project or that we have to throw all of this technology at the problem to solve it.
Which is like what we're trying to all. Well, all we're trying to solve is regardless of the global warming and all the other, it's like we just want efficiency. Like at the end of the day, people want efficiency. They want a house or a building that is cost effective to heat and cool and all the other good stuff. It's comfortable, it doesn't kill you with like toxins.
And so they come in and they say like, oh, what about solar panels and triple paid windows and just exotic building materials, the way I would describe it in technologies. And I go, well, we actually solve 90% of the problem if we can just orient the house or the building correctly, especially if it's a new build.
They go, really? And I go, yeah. And then I draw a little diagram I'm like, well, we're in the northern hemisphere. If we can, we can make it a long east, west kind of shaped building. And then we're, you know, putting very few windows and openings on the north side and selective ones in the east and west and then really embracing that winter sun and trying to block it in the winter on the south side or in the summer, we're good.
And they go, really? And I go, yeah, that last 5 to 10%, I go, is that's where we start to talk about specialty insulation and cladding and windows and solar panels and all the other good stuff. So there's sort of that point to talk about. And then I, then I also talk about the codes and I go, look, everything you're describing is actually just default in the building codes now. And they go, really? I'm like, yeah, like these aren't, these aren't high performance windows. They're actually just regular at this point. And everybody's kind of on board with all of that. But the bad sort of rug that I'm about to pull out here is Cali rado, who is controlled by a certain one party, right? And at this point, like, it didn't used to be that way. When I worked for a while, it was purple. It was so awesome. I was like, oh, cool. Everybody gets a voice now. It's just is we're, we have a, there's an energy, a big energy mandate that's coming out in the fall that will be draconian by nature. It just can be. And it's going to have all of these very top down rules that affect places. The metro areas are going to survive just fine because they're already expensive to live in. People expect that the salaries are higher. But what it's going to kill is it's going to kill the people in the suburb and suburban and then the rural areas, which those people matter. Like that's actually over half the state's population still.
We only have one major city and then a couple college towns, Boulder, Fort Collins. Yeah, so that's where it's at. I mean, and then I built, I've designed to build two houses for myself. One for my family, wife and four kids, and then now one in the condo that I live in.
And the big house that we built, we solved all those problems. Like I said, 90% of it was solved and we didn't have to do anything special. It was kind of like your, it was a beautiful modern house and everything like that. So I'm all about efficiency, but I'M not here to think that we're going to like save the planet. When you have people like countries like China and India to like, I know, whole plant today, it's like, come on, we're sort of like, I fear that we're going to self impose a hardship that is on the American people. That's not really, it's not necessary, you.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Know, not that this is, this is a little off topic. I'm just curious to get your take again on affordability.
It's a, it's a big problem across the country. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on the subject and how big of an issue it is where you are.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: Massive. It's just so massive.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: I feel like I've heard that about out there.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: But yeah, we have. There's two different a words that get thrown around a lot. One is affordable housing and the other is the one that doesn't get thrown around enough and it is called attainable housing.
Where there's a big missing middle happening right now.
High end. There's always going to be high end. There's always going to be people a lot of money who want to do the coolest buildings ever and we're happy to have them.
The government is actually doing a decent job with affordable housing here. They've implemented some rules and measures that make it so. If you're a developer, for instance, in the town that we work in, if you do 10 units or over, then they, 12% of them have to be set aside for affordable housing, right? So then they. And affordable meaning like people 50% or below the median income. So we're talking like the lower middle class. And that's why it's like lower, lower middle class. That's why the middle is missing and there's not enough focus or help on that.
All these politicians say over and over again every single cycle in my city council and the adjacent ones and the ones beyond. It's the same stuff. It's the same things.
We want, we want to make, we want affordable and attainable housing. And they say it over and over again and every single time I press them they go and I go, how are you going to do that? Like how are you going to do that?
I go, hey, I'm a developer, I'm a, I'm a builder, I'm an architect. I'm one of the guys that you should be talking to. You should get all of us in a room and you should get the people making the rules and I'm sorry, enforcing the rules in the room. Zoning, the planners, the building department, that's a fire department. We need to get all of us in a room. And we have to agree, we're not telling lies in that room. And the politicians, like you guys can mediate between us, but you need to see the problems here.
And then what their answer always is is they go, oh, increased density.
They just keep saying this, increased density.
That's their default. They're like robots. And what they. And what I find is a guy who's practicing all of this stuff in the field is, for example, we took a project that absolutely every city council person, left, right or center loves this idea. We have all this commercial space in America. Too much commercial space, especially with more people working from home. They go, why aren't we taking these commercial buildings and converting them into residential? We just did. Oh, my God. Not only that, exactly. This is exactly where I'm going with it, Frank. Not only expensive, but like, wow, you guys couldn't cut red tape. So we can do this beautiful, this project that you guys want. Like, you guys want to, you guys want to talk about this to your other city council people? You go to these conferences, you know, like, oh, look at what we're doing in our town. Look at us, we're so great.
We took a three story building, we left commercial on the first floor. We converted the top two to attainable units.
It was the. It's one of the biggest nightmares projects of my entire life. And it's not because the architect screwed up. It's not because me, the. I'm the architect, as I make. This is the builder. It's not because of the developer.
It's because we cannot get the city to get out of its own way. So they treated it as a new building and threw all of these codes at us, which can't even. Can't. Can't apply. Like, they physically can't. And I'm a big believer in, like, you can get anything done, anything's possible, you know, God is infinite and all this other stuff. Nope, not in this case. There's been instance after instance after instance after instance.
So you. So the city council is saying all of these things. They're talking out of the, you know, this side of their mouth.
And at the same time, they never talk to the people, almost never, who enforce the rules that they made up and the ideas that they're implementing. So the left hand can't talk to the right hand. I think that's the biggest problem, right? Because, like, we can solve those problems, especially at a local level.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: We all know we can't, like, tell Jerome Powell tomorrow, even though I tell him all the time on the podcast, Jerome, please drop those rates.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it's like you said, they get in their own way and they cause their own problems, and that's a big part of what everybody's dealing with, I think.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And it's not that we're trying to cut corners. No. We are looking for flexibility. We need these local governments to be malleable and flexible and responsive. It's not about cutting corners or making buildings unsafe. It's about doing those three things.
[00:44:43] Speaker B: That's interesting.
I said I was gonna. I was thinking I was gonna ask no more questions and go straight to fishing before we finish up. But I do have one more question.
[00:44:54] Speaker A: I want to ask. Yeah.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: And I know this isn't what you do, but I'm. But. But these questions, I think, are important, especially for people who are listening and are in the industry or tied to the industry.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: You know, we do have an interesting thing happening where there's now 3D printing of homes.
And I think in the future here we've got rates, and the market is changing right now as we speak today on this podcast. I think UPS laid off 20,000 people yesterday. Don't quote me on that, but I think that's correct.
I'm just curious your thoughts on the building industry through the rest of the year. And if you have any thoughts on that, and if you don't, that's fine. But I just was wondering what your thoughts are on the industry as a whole right now.
Curious to know.
[00:45:31] Speaker A: It's going to be just like the market. Choppy.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: Sky was falling a month ago.
I bought the dip.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: And now I'm real happy, you know. And so it's up and down, up and down, up and down.
And people are holding on by a thread right now. That's the thing about it, is we're all at the edge. Because if the liquid is frozen like it was in 2000, after the crash, in 2008, I'm not saying we're there, but there's definitely echoes. That's the way I've been describing to everybody is like, we're echoing the Great Recession. And they go like, yeah, but there's no housing bubble on. And go. Yeah, you're kind of right in that way. Like, the Fed. The Fed did thread this needle perfectly. I mean, I. I've had to eat crow about it multiple times in public on my show. I'm like, fine. The Federal Reserve Because I'm not a Keynesian at all. You know, I'm very much a Lockean and very much like a museum economic school Chicagoan. And I'm like, oh, I guess they actually printed all that money during COVID doubled the money supply and they literally threaded it perfectly. I like, I am just shocked. So if the tariff negotiations even out and China ends up playing ball like the UK just did, hopefully India does. If they're, if they can finish this little squabble with Pakistan, I think we'll be okay. Because again, it points back to like the. We have this huge housing demand. We people want to work. We're still the richest country in the world. People are coming here because obviously. Right.
Because of all those reasons. So I'm optimistic long term and I am cautious short term.
[00:47:12] Speaker B: I think we're both in the same place, which I think is the right. Is the right way to be.
Okay, cool.
Fishing.
What do you, what are you fishing? I mean, it's got to be fresh water up there. So that's what you're fishing. Right. Rivers, streams, like that kind of stuff. You're not. Or do you do all kinds of fishing and you travel when you're doing these fishing.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: Your show, I would say 90% of it is local to Colorado. Yeah. But like we just got back from my big fishing trip where we went up to North Dakota where I grew up, to chase these hundred pound freshwater fish. They're like a hunt. They're. They're called paddlefish, spoonbill catfish or whatever. You snag them, it's pretty incredible. You can only fish them for like two years, two weeks out of the, out of the whole year.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: That's cool.
[00:47:57] Speaker A: Yeah. But the 90% of the content, you know, I've. Guys, I previewed this earlier.
My 2020 hit. There's Covid. I was burnt out, couldn't go anywhere. Wife didn't want to go anywhere. Then my kids all turned teenagers too at the same time.
And I, and I went, oh, my God. You guys actually don't want anything to do with us. Wow.
You guys wanted everything to do with us for a long time and now they want nothing. Nothing. They don't even want to go to like do fun stuff anymore. I was like, fine now. And I had, I had, I finally had like comfortable money and I was like, oh, yeah. I moved to Colorado so I could incessantly fish. I forgot. Well, now I don't. Oh, yeah.
[00:48:44] Speaker B: You have things. I like that. I don't put the kids first.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And yep. And the businesses were established, so I was like.
And you know, again, no traveling and all that.
So I rekindled my passion, which was from childhood fishing and growing up and you know, in the outdoors and then in Montana and Idaho and all those places. And I became obsessed, I became re obsessed with alpine fishing specifically.
So I go on these hikes that are between at the lower end, maybe 5, 6 miles round trip to as much as 20 miles, usually in one day.
And I have an elevation gain. Typically I start at like 9,000ft and end up at 12,000 above the air.
They're very intense, but they're insanely rewarding because I never see anybody else at these lakes. I have the, I have them all to myself.
They're freshwater, but they look like the ocean.
They, you can see 20, 30ft into the water.
And I'm typically chasing Colorado cutthroat trout or brook trout.
So I go on the, I was going on these, I was doing this like Saturday, Sunday, and then I was starting to take off Wednesdays from work and I got done with the first sort of season.
Not, I didn't film it, but I, I fished almost every single lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, James Peak Wilderness and Rocky Mountain National Park. It's a huge area.
And I was, I got, I was, I was like, finally one day I was like, I want to make sure I can share these, my adventures should be shared with people. Like, this is who a lot of people never ever go that high. They'll never go that deep. So I started filming and it's, it's been awesome. Started filming and sure enough, like, I think we're up like 3,500 subscribers at, on YouTube. I get, I've met so many people that have become like some of my best friends. They'll DM me on insta and I'll be like, sure. Always room for efficient buddy. And they're usually, usually very good people. You know, like, there's just something about the outdoor crowd that's like, you're pretty trustworthy dude or gal or whatever. So.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds amazing. I, I, I love, I've never been a big fisherman. I deep sea fishing because I've always been on the coast when I did it.
But I love hunting and that sounds amazing. Like the hiking now do you keep the fish when you catch them? Are you cooking them out there?
[00:51:17] Speaker A: No.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: Are you throwing them back? What are you doing?
[00:51:19] Speaker A: All of the above. And one of my favorite things to do is, is to do the catch and cooks right on the Shore at that high?
[00:51:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the best.
[00:51:28] Speaker A: It is. And it blows people's minds. So I read a book. So I did that for like, you know, did that. Started doing that in 2020 or whatever. And one day my business partner pissed me off. Like, I think it was last year. I'd come down from one of these hikes and I was kind of like braggadocious about it. I'm like, I'm like, dude, I'm beating, I'm beating 25, 30 year olds. Like, here isn't anybody who can beat me up the mountain. He goes, cameron Haynes can. Like screw Hammer and Cameron Haynes, you know. So then I had this chip on my shoulder about Cameron Haynes for like a year. It was goofy.
[00:52:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:02] Speaker A: But I read this book, then I.
[00:52:04] Speaker B: Read book you're gonna say, I know it. I can't think of the title. Is it about the. The guy who was not a hunter and goes on that trip and it's doing a challenging thing, a misogy. I think it's.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: You're nailing it. Comfort Crisis.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: What's the name of it?
[00:52:20] Speaker A: Comfort Crisis.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: Yes, the Comfort Crisis.
[00:52:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So I read that book and I only read that book two year. Two. Two, two, two months ago when I was on one of the most extreme hikes I'd done so far.
It was like again, like, I think a 12 mile round trip or something. And it was, it was in the dead of winter, snowshoeing, 50 pound pack on it was exactly what this guy is describing. And I get about halfway through the book and I go, I could have wrote this book like. And then I got even more mad at Al. So I get back down the mountain and I go to Al and I'm like, hey, did you finish the book? And he goes, yep. And I go, who do you think need to read that book more, me or you? And he goes, me. And I go, there you go. Now quit. I go, Cameron Haynes finishes where I start, just so you know, because he does. He actually, it's like he starts at seven, he goes to nine. I'm like, I start at nine, bro. I go above the tree line. So where I'm going with this is I go, guess what? You're invited to Al. You're. You're invited to Camp Uncomfortable. And guess who's hosting. Me.
So this summer I started, the last summer was kind of like a dry run of it because I had a buddy who came down and we did exactly that. Like we rented a side by side, went in this 4x4 trail to the trailhead. So we're already like eight miles deep just to get to the trailhead. And then after that is the 10 mile hike or whatever.
And so I invited all my buddies, made a little graphic and everything and this August I'm going to host Camp Uncomfortable and it's like to get the guys out there and go get off your butt. You're middle aged. It's time to make sure you stay in shape for a long life and career. And this is what it's all about. It's all that stuff in the book. So.
[00:53:54] Speaker B: Yep, I love it man. I'm all about that stuff. So super cool. I like the name Camp Uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah, I like it.
It's been good conversation today. What? Where can people find you? Where would you want them to find you if they're looking for you?
[00:54:11] Speaker A: Yeah, go to. Go to LinkedIn. I'll link them with anybody. I'll link in with you right after this, Frank. I try to do that. First name Lance. L A, N, C E. Last name Psycho. C A, Y, K O. I'm the only one who's on there. I will link in with anybody. You can go to inside the firmpodcast.com check us out there. Subscribe and then F9Productions.com we have a newsletter we send out every month. If you sign up there you can check out everything we're doing. Reach out.
[00:54:34] Speaker B: Cool. Love it.
All right man.
Thanks everybody for tuning in again and we'll put everything in the show Notes Lance. It's been great and hopefully we'll do it again sometime in the future.
[00:54:47] Speaker A: Yeah buddy. Yeah. Stay in touch.
[00:54:49] Speaker B: Take care everybody.
[00:54:58] Speaker A: Sam.
