[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone, welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Lance Cayko Lance is the owner and co founder of F9 productions. It's an ambitious Architecture firm specializing in sustainable living for the modern future, which we're gonna get into Lance.

Thanks for joining me, buddy

[00:00:44] Lance: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:46] Jay: You're awesome, man. You're a serial entrepreneur architect builder real estate developer professor to University professional fisherman a podcaster a philanthropist you got a lot going on. I want to get into all that stuff. tell me a little bit about where you grew up and what impact that had on your entrepreneurial journey.

[00:00:59] Lance: Oh, yeah. That's where it all started. Yeah. Thanks so much for that question. So I grew up in northwest North Dakota. I'm 40 years old. My journey started way back in 20 when I was 13. I grew up between a sugar beet farm and a cattle ranch and I in the summers I would be on the sugar beet farm. When I was 13, I tried to farm with my dad over on summer, and I lasted about a week.

And what it was irrigating sugar beets. And what that entails is, we're waking up every, even in the night, every two to three hours, getting up, changing the inner tubes out and everything like that. Or the irrigation tubes, rather. The mesquite, we were just talking about the heat wave here, Jay, before we went live, and the heat wave up there is crazy, too.

Believe it or not, even though it's North Dakota. So the humidity is crazy. The mosquitoes are crazy. I hated it. I didn't get along with my dad too well. And I said, Hey, this isn't for me. As a matter of fact, I even have a replacement for me. My best friend, Chris wants to do this. He'll do it all day long.

I'm not going to do it though. He said, you got to do something. I go, yeah, I obviously agree. I want to make money. We grew up in a very low middle class household and Kids had to work to just make things meet and if they wanted Jordans, you had to work for him and stuff 

[00:02:05] Jay: Right. Yep.

[00:02:06] Lance: So I called up his, buddy who, his best friend who was the general contractor that night that I quit. And I said, Hey Bruce, I've always wanted to build stuff. I always liked building stuff. I'll do anything. do you have any openings? And he said, Yeah, you can be my gofer. You can go for this, you can go for that when you're done going for the things.

Then you can get up on the roof and, and learn how to roof. that summer he had a big contract. It was 80 roofs. we would wake up at 4 or 5 a. m., have them torn off by about 10 a. m., have them put back on by 2 p. m. Very intense work in all of that. But I just, I really fell in love with construction at that point.

for so many different reasons. The camaraderie. The guy talk. it was masculine. You got dirty. You got to see what you did for the day. and it was rewarding. It was like a life skill that you could do. but the big tipping point and what kind of started me off on the entrepreneur part of it all was, again, my dad was basically a farmhand on the farm, not an entrepreneur.

My mother worked in a dental clinic is still working at the central clinic 40 years later, not an entrepreneur. They're not risk taking people. Bruce was the first entrepreneur that I ever, the contractor was the first entrepreneur that ever met. and But middle of the summer he could see some potential with me That he honestly didn't see for the other guys and no offense the other guys like Those guys were more or less drunks that were working for him, right?

But I was just this young kid who's pretty smart and He said to me I got lunch break one day about halfway through the summer Hey Lance, I'm paying you 7. 25 an hour. How much do you think I'm charging the clients? I go 7. 25 an hour like an idiot. I didn't know any better because no one in my family is a business person, right?

And he laughed and he said, no, I'm paying. I'm charging them usually three to four times what I'm paying you. And I'm like, oh, why do you do that? That seems like you're ripping the client off. He goes, absolutely not. He goes, I got to pay for all the overhead, plus I need something called profit. My reward for hiring you is the profit.

And the profit also is just lifeblood of a company. I have any entrepreneurs knows that. As soon as I understood the multiplication factor of it all, and then I saw how little anxiety Bruce had about money compared to my mom and dad, who worried about a thousand dollar bill from a phone company.

For instance, in one instance, when I ran up the phone bill inadvertently, it was like a panic attack on our house. when a thousand dollar bill came out, felt like the world was going to end, right? Which is to me is not a lot of money these days and But with Bruce like it's not that he was living an extravagant lifestyle It's just oh, there's no anxiety in your house about money.

Like it's just not an issue. I want that I want freedom from anxiety

So that's where my journey really started with that one little conversation.

[00:04:32] Jay: I love that. It's a great story. If talk to me about F9. you are an architect. it's your business co founded. what decided to make you break free at that point, and was that kind of your break free moment where you decided to go do your own thing? I mean, obviously you have an extensive background other than that, but that's seemingly the most lasting one so far as something that you've built.

what was the story behind that?

[00:04:53] Lance: Yeah, it's the core of all we do to be able to do all the things that you just said during your intro with me for sure. Yeah. So it was a push to come to shove sort of thing, which actually I'm really grateful for that we got put in that position. So my business partner and I, my business partner's name is Al Gore.

He's not. But he's my real Al Gore. And we both got laid off after we graduated top of the class. Number one, number two, from North coast university, one of the best architecture schools in the nation. he went to work for a rockstar kind of architect in New York city, Daniel Libeskind guy who did the world trade center tower redesign that kind of a high caliber stuff, and then I went.

To Studio HT in Boulder, which is now a defunct firm, but they were a regionally famous They both won a young architect of the year both very prestigious firms in their own regard We got laid off within the nine to twelve months after we got those jobs in 2008 because everybody knows what happened It was that's when the big great recession happened So I was driving home after I got laid off and I could see the writing on the wall with all of that not wanting to go back to North Dakota.

I relied on my handyman work, that I had built up, basically being a subcontractor and just being a journeyman level kind of carpenter to make ends meet. So I didn't have to go back to North Dakota and get carried away by those mosquitoes. I just was not interested in it. Colorado is a dream place to live, really.

And so that's what started F9. And really we, as a 90s kid, I assume we're similar in age here. you, everybody heard about the Michael Jordan story, like I live by that story, but I love the chip on the shoulder, the fire in your belly, lean into the adversity, use that as a positive force and turn it into a positive force.

So that's how we felt is what we felt like we got cut from the team, like we got cut from the team. Now it's time to make up for that and crush it. And so we founded F9 in 2009, 2010, scrapped our way around for about three or four years before we started to get some traction. And then, and from 2013 to 2023, it has been this awesome level of growth.

We, what I'm really grateful for mostly is like, all the architects that are bad business people, which is most architects, including the ones that laid us off, right? They put all their eggs in one basket. And so one of the big, biggest, most fundamental things that we did right away was like, Oh, we're not going to put all our eggs in one basket.

we're not going to go after just one typology. Like we are here to be architects who serve a greater purpose and a bigger audience. And it served us well. So the last decade of growth has been amazing. We've grown from a firm that was really not making any money profit wise, like we were able to pay ourselves barely, low six figures up into a high seven figure firm.

And then we, which kind of culminated this year by us winning the best of mile high award, which is the award for the best architect in all of Colorado.

[00:07:38] Jay: Wow. Congratulations on

that. 

[00:07:40] Lance: you.

[00:07:41] Jay: So who was your first customer at F9?

[00:07:44] Lance: Oh man, very first customer. I'm going to tell you about Al's because I think that one's one of the best stories that really laid the foundation work for what are our principles on our website. you go to our website and you go to about, we have nine principles, which kind of encompasses the name F9 productions.

And so the first customer that he got was, this was when right before. Marijuana and Cannabis became legal recreationally and it was only legal medicinally in Colorado. So there was this huge green rush that was still happening then. And people were opening up, grow shops and then also like places where you could go get MMJ, the medical version of that.

And the first client that he landed was a pot shop in Boulder, Colorado. And at that point, like this was, so this would have been, 2010. We're still very much in a very deep recession. And so getting projects was difficult and you were competing against sometimes like a hundred architects.

It was really intense on how to do it. So sure enough, we were ended up competing against a lot of architects, not just like your standard, Hey, I'm going to go get three bids, pick the middle one or whatever your metric is for that we landed that project and what Alex. Learned from that was he just point blank asked the owner he goes like hey We were all done with the drawings and everything and kind of at the end of the project.

Hey, just curious Why did you pick us? Why did you pick us? Like we're young guys. You don't have much experience so far and what set us apart and he goes you guys under promise and over delivered and that work that worked for us Like he goes honestly your fees weren't the lowest you guys in the middle you guys usually you guys Responded to us right away.

You were punctual You under promised and you over delivered all the way throughout the whole process. And so we've carried that through all, all of our clients since then is like, for example, everybody's in a hurry in terms of construction because as soon as, let's say somebody is going to open up a new store and they just, get the thousand, they start the lease at the thousand square foot space.

Well, that clock is ticking 

[00:09:44] Jay: Right. 

[00:09:44] Lance: have to start paying rent. Or you buy a piece of land, the interest is clicking or, ticking away on that if you bought the land, with a loan or something like that, we're just completely honest and absolutely 100 percent okay with giving them a worst case scenario about when they'll get their permits, when we'll be done with drawings and then since we do that and we're conservative with that, We always over deliver and try to beat our own sort of deadline.

And we're the good guys every time.

[00:10:10] Jay: Love that. that is a tenant to live by. Let's switch gears a little bit. apart from architecture and construction. You're a professional fisherman. Can you tell me what that means, and, what that entails?

[00:10:22] Lance: Yeah, I hitSo, a couple of other things we do is we do general contracting and we are real estate developers. And you were asking about the space behind me right now. I'm sitting in my office that we designed, built, and developed. And we finished this project that I'm sitting in. It's called Mark 2.

There's a triplex and a sixplex. Eight of the units are condos, some of which we kept as investment properties. And then in the triplex, we obviously kept the office. As our own office and investment property. And so why I'm referencing that is because I wore all three hats when we were doing this. We were the architects.

We were the kind of general contractors and we were the real estate developers. There was about, there was a time during the construction of this in 2019, 2000, early 2020 where I was, I worked 80 days in a row, 80 days in a row. it was just day in and day out, like 12 to 16 hour days, God bless my wife for it.

Taking care of the kids and managing the house and having supper ready and doing the little stuff while I was doing that and allowing me to level up. But that kind of level of work pushed me to burnout. And I'm not a person that burns out easily. So I found myself with that happening, like the work burnout of it all.

And then I also found, and then COVID hit. So there was this sort of other like being inside kind of burnout. And as a person who's an extrovert during the week. even sometimes on the weekend, just a go, go. I don't like to be told what to do. I don't like that kind of restriction. it was a very difficult mental place for me to be in.

with all of that. And then the third thing that happened was, all of our kids started to be tweens and teens. And my mom had been telling me this my whole life. Wait until they're teens, they're not gonna care. Meaning, they don't give a shit about you. And so they, they didn't. And all of a sudden I found myself going being, going from super dad, To where every weekend we're doing something with the kids, every day we're doing something with the kids, for the kids to go Can you take my friends and leave me alone?

And I'm like, Oh wow, now all of a sudden I have all this free time. And when I originally moved to Colorado in 2008, The whole, one of the reasons why, We were looking in Montana, we were looking in Oregon and Portland and everything was, I grew up summering in Montana and Idaho and grew up Chasing trout, fishing for trout and being an outdoorsman and doing outdoor stuff in the mountains.

It just, that's where my soul is in the mountains, for sure. And I went, oh yeah, it's been, I don't know, 12 years. I forgot about why I moved here. I'm gonna go fishing now. I'm going fishing 

[00:12:54] Jay: Yeah. 

[00:12:55] Lance: And I became re obsessed with it in to no end. And it really helped with the burnout, it helped with coping with all the covid, lockdowns and all of that, all that crap.

And then obviously it helped with just me personally going Oh yeah, I totally forgot about this. So I just dove so far ahead. That's how I operate is like I, once I go over the fence or jump in the pool, like I'm in there, I'm as deep as you can go, that sort of thing. And so I got on a couple of social media apps like Fish Angler.

I went on to fish explorer. com and what's really cool about Colorado is, I mean, there's many cool things, but like we have this amazing, we have this maze at all these amazing mountains and like between nine and 12, 000 feet in the air are all of these untouched gems of lakes 

[00:13:41] Jay: Mm hmm. 

[00:13:42] Lance: that nobody goes to.

It is so meditative to go on, hikes and go up there and see 25 feet in the water and watch the fish eat. your baits and everything because it's so clear and pristine that I was updating and posting on these lakes and nobody was really doing it before and I got the attention of those various social media apps and they ended up hiring me to be fish and fish angler ambassador which makes it makes you a pro.

You get a bunch of equipment and stuff like that. Fish Explorer became the regional editor for James Peak Wilderness and Indian Peaks Wilderness and then Rocky Mountain National Park, the whole park to like manage all those waters. and then I found myself like, I'm like, man, I'm doing a lot of solo trips because these hikes are hard.

There's you're climbing 2, 000 feet in, in and out. You're doing like 8 to 10 miles. It's hard for me to find people that want to do that kind of stuff with 73 percent of Americans being obese. And I was like, one day I'm gonna be old. I'm not gonna be able to hike like this. I'm not gonna be able to go to these places anymore.

I feel like I should document this stuff. I feel like I should share this with the world. if there's people that are like physically disabled, like when would they ever get to see these kind of adventures unless somebody recorded them? So I started filming my adventures about 18 months ago, launched a YouTube channel, launched a news break channel, and then that's where I'm monetized.

So I make a very meager living as a professional fisherman in that way. the more content you have, the more it grows and you get exponential as being a podcaster.

[00:15:05] Jay: Yeah. Wow. I grew up offshore fishing a lot. growing up, my parents or my grandparents had a charter boat and would take people out and I would tag along. Huge fisherman myself, not a professional, but I would, I'm gonna have to check out your channel man, that sounds

[00:15:20] Lance: yeah, fishing with Lance. It's 

[00:15:21] Jay: I will, Fishing with Lance, what a great name.

Fishing

with Cayko, 

[00:15:25] Lance: Yeah, that's 

I know my brother's a professional bowhunter Like for ant for deer and he's like his he was like if he ever does it I keep telling like you got to just do it man. He wants to make his American Cayko. 

[00:15:36] Jay: Yeah, of course, you, yeah, 

or, yeah, Cayko Bowhunting.

Tell me about these urban gardens. You do a lot of stuff. This one seems a little more altruistic and maybe, on the philanthropist side of things. I have heard the term many times. I have, again, a rough idea of what it means, but I don't really know.

So tell me about where that came from and what you guys do.

[00:15:57] Lance: Yeah, sure. So When I moved here in 2008, we lived in Al and I live kitty corner and apartments And you can't grow things. And as somebody who grew up on a literal farm, and also a cattle ranch, we pretty much procured all of our meat, all of our vegetables, and I just,that has always stayed with me, just as a human being, of I think it's one of the coolest things you can do, is if you can provide, if you can make, if you can create a whole meal, by growing all of your own vegetables, catching your own fish, shooting your own deer, whatever, or butchering your own meat.

What are like an ethereal experience, like eating to me and preparing food is almost a spiritual endeavor. Like we, it's such a big part of our lives. And so I found myself missing that because you can't grow anything in an apartment or anything like that. thank God there was these community gardens.

so I Googled them, got a plot, back in 2010. And at the time it was, Growing Gardens was the non profit. And they were, like an umbrella non profit that basically they would... Make these really neat deals with the city. So there's all these leftover pieces of land throughout Boulder County in the urban areas, like Longmont and Superior and stuff like that.

Like next to the railroad tracks. Imagine that never going to get developed. Nobody's put an office building there. Nobody's putting houses there or anything like that, but they have this land and they make these leases with the city saying they'll take care of them. They'll develop them into garden plots.

And then more people from the city who are in my kind of situation where they don't have the opportunity to really have a backyard or anything like that because it's urban, this gives them that opportunity. So I was the garden leader there from about 2011 up until 2020 right when COVID started to hit.

And Growing Gardens was like, okay, we've done our job, Lance. Like we have expanded all throughout Boulder County. And we think at this point, like our tentacles are too far spread out. And so what we'd like to do is we're trying to identify garden leaders who have led their perspective garden, their respective gardens for a long enough time to where we feel like we'll offer them the opportunity if they want to make it their own nonprofit, they can.

And so I just jumped at it. And that's the idea is that I've always wanted to do is have some kind of legacy project besides all the other stuff that I do with the buildings and everything like that. And I was like, yes, absolutely. so I founded Longmont Community Gardens. We took over the gardens.

in that area, we have about 40 plots right now, and, it's a lot of it's volunteer work. People have to pay like, 40, 80, and I think 120 bucks for the various sizes of plots for the year. But they get free seeds, free water, free help, all that kind of good stuff. More people, it's just a very healthy thing for people to do to get out there, get in the sun, get that good vitamin D.

Grow their own stuff. And then we have, over the last year, we've identified two different areas in Longmont. One is with Longmont Community, or sorry, Longmont Christian School. And then there's a plot of land just to the south of us that the city's willing to also, extend the size of our lease on.

And we're hopefully gonna expand, to both of those in the next year or two. And basically triple the size of the non profit.

[00:19:01] Jay: What's your favorite fruit or vegetable to watch grow?

[00:19:05] Lance: Potatoes. You don't even see the potatoes grow, right? They're underground. I just think potatoes are the most delicious. So

[00:19:12] Jay: Okay. Alright. Fair enough. Fair enough. If you had to start F9 over again tomorrow, After all these different things that you've been doing, all the things you've learned, just business wise, what would be step one for F9 tomorrow to start over again?

[00:19:27] Lance: no one's ever asked me that, that question at all. trickier part this time would be finding another, and I have to, I'm just going to pretend like this is assuming that we have no built work again. the scenario honestly would be like, if Alex and I ever sold this and then we were like, okay, we're going to move to, let's say I want to move to Florida and I would start over in that certain way this time around.

I would be pickier, even with no portfolio at all, I, I would say no a lot more because I think that's one of the biggest lessons that I've learned as an entrepreneur and just a human being actually getting to 40 is have the courage to say no, have the courage to actually be disliked.

I think that's much more important than saying yes, I don't, there's a lot of entrepreneurs like books that I've read, like even Tim Ferriss, where it's say yes to everything. I think that's horrible advice. I think it's better to say no to more things than it is to say yes.

[00:20:25] Jay: I like that a lot. I have a Tim Ferriss book on my desk that's in eyesight. I have a very, uh, my perspective has shifted of him over the years

as, I've grown up and been an entrepreneur and run a business. I think you see his... Some of his stuff through a different lens as you've lived some of his examples or lived through some of the things he Talks about in this book So I certainly agree with some of them and I would say heavily disagree with some of the things that he talks about But for the most part, there's a lot of good stuff in there If you could do anything on earth non business related and you knew you couldn't fail What would it be?

[00:21:04] Lance: Oh, I would start a, did you say non business related? I'm 

[00:21:08] Jay: non business related

So, a bucket list item, something that you wanted to do that you haven't done, something you're scared to do, what is something you would do if you knew you couldn't fail?

[00:21:18] Lance: I would start driving to Alaska and build a cabin in the woods and see if I would survive. I would like, just try it out for as long as I possibly could. It would be like my own, what is it, Naked and Alone? Or whatever those, reality shows are.

that's what I would do.

[00:21:34] Jay: Okay. That's a first. It's like that book Hatchet, I think.

[00:21:37] Lance: Yes! Exactly! That's exactly what I was getting at, Jay, was hatchet, yeah.

[00:21:41] Jay: Hatchet was a great, that was a great,

book. I remember reading that as like a kid for some reason. Was it a kid's book? I don't, I can't

[00:21:46] Lance: yeah, every young man in America, I feel like, who read that book was like, fascinated with that idea.

[00:21:51] Jay: they're like, I think I could make it.

And then, you're not really sure, but you're like, I think I could make

it. let's wrap it there, man. This was great. You have your, I love your energy, I love all the things you got going on. I think there's some good lessons that people could learn from this today. If people are trying to find Lance Cayko, or any of the million things you have going on, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

[00:22:11] Lance: Best way would be to go to linkedin. com, type in L A N C E, last name Cayko. It is pronounced Cayko, but it is spelled C A Y K O. That's C A Y K O. I will link in. With anybody if you want to keep up with everything we're doing architecture and building wise go to f9productions. com sign up to our newsletter And if you want to hear our podcast inside the firm podcast where we peel back The onion and we basically have an executive meeting that you get to be a part of every friday And then every monday we have entrepreneurs like jay or podcasters on For the monday morning coffee episodes go to inside the firm podcast And don't forget to find me on the YouTube if you want to see some high alpine, beautiful Rocky Mountain fishing adventures.

[00:22:51] Jay: be there. I'm gonna check that out, dude. Fishing with Lance.

I am gonna check that out today. Lance, you're fantastic. Thank you for your time today, brother. Stay cool in this heat and we'll, we'll stay in touch and talk soon, okay?

[00:23:03] Lance: Thank you, Jay.

[00:23:04] Jay: Thanks, Lance. 

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