The Creative Aspects of Entrepreneurship Embracing Entrepreneurship as an Architect | Lance Cayko

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this conversation, Christian Brim interviews Lance Cayko of F9 Productions. They discuss Lance's entrepreneurial journey and the creative aspects of being an entrepreneur. They also explore the relationship between money and happiness, the importance of gratitude, and the challenges and sacrifices of being an entrepreneur. Lance Cayko, founder of F9 Productions, discusses his journey as an architect and entrepreneur. He shares his proudest accomplishment of never laying off any employees and creating jobs for people. Lance emphasizes the importance of embracing entrepreneurship as an architect and being intentional with money. He also talks about the impact of being an entrepreneur on personal relationships and the need for a strict routine to maintain work-life balance.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Entrepreneurship is a creative endeavor that requires creativity at every moment.
• Having money is not everything, but not having it can create anxiety and limit freedom.
• Comparison is the thief of joy, and it's important to be grateful for what you have.
• Being an entrepreneur involves making sacrifices and embracing discomfort.
• Success as an entrepreneur is not about reaching a certain financial milestone, but about continuous growth and pushing the envelope. Embrace entrepreneurship as an architect and be open to being an entrepreneur first with a certain set of skills.
• Creating jobs and never laying off employees can be a source of pride for entrepreneurs.
• Develop a healthy relationship with money and be intentional about its use.
• Fear can be a driving force in entrepreneurship, but it's important to not let it close off possibilities.
• Having a strict routine and setting boundaries can help maintain work-life balance as an entrepreneur.
• Being an entrepreneur can have both positive and negative effects on personal relationships.

Ready to turn your PASSION into PROFIT?!? Let's get CREATIVE ➡️
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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01)
Welcome to another edition of the Profitable Creative. I'm your host, Christian Brim. The only place on the internet where you will learn to turn your passion into a profit. I am joined today by Lance Syko of F9 Productions. I did say that correct, F9 Productions. Okay, I just had a mental blip and I'm like, was it Productions? Because that sounded like a...

Lance Cayko (00:22)
Yes, sir.

Christian Brim (00:30)
Film studio, so I just paused there for a second. So welcome Lance. Sorry. I'm rambling

Lance Cayko (00:36)
All good, yeah, thanks for having me. The psycho part must have threw you off too a little bit, I don't blame you. Some people have a lot of trouble just going, it makes them uncomfortable. like, do I have to say it? Well, I mean, you asked.

Christian Brim (00:40)
Ha ha ha!

I don't want to call you that. Yeah, I'm totally fine with it. I would be called so I am called psycho. So no relation, however. So tell me in your own words, how you you arrived here. What's what's the brief synopsis of your entrepreneurial journey?

Lance Cayko (00:57)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Okay, I'll try to be as brief as possible then. 13 years old, I quit farming with dad and went and decided to be a carpenter from 13 to 21. Then I explored about every trade in the construction field besides mechanical electrical plumbing. Went to trade school to become a general contractor. Actually loved school for the first time after doing that because I think I think because I got to I got to choose what I wanted to do and I'm very much a

Type A, first child, first grandchild, you know, leader got to just my way or the highway for me anyway. And, and then went to apply to, was like, well, I'm not a build. This is cool, but it seems like the architect gets a client first. if I, what if I, what if I went to architecture school? So I applied to North Dakota state, seven miles, no, or 70 miles North got accepted there again, excelled at school, graduated top of the class, got an internship in Boulder.

Christian Brim (01:47)
Yes.

Lance Cayko (02:09)
laid off nine months later. And that's what started the trajectory of me doing this, going the serial entrepreneur route, starting my own firm. And then we started in 2010 to 2017. We kind of hit that seven -year mark. that seven -year mark is significant if you're an entrepreneur and a business person. know most businesses fail within that seven years. So we got to year seven. was like my business partner and I go, we should record this somehow.

We've established ourselves in the worst time possible during the Great Recession. Yeah, very difficult to do. And amidst sort of also all the media and sociocultural kind of dogma at that time, especially and still kind of now about being anti -capitalist, anti -entrepreneur, and a lot of it was coming from my generation, millennial sort of thing. And we were like,

Christian Brim (02:44)
Right?

Lance Cayko (03:07)
we should, this could inspire people to do what we're doing. You know, I want more entrepreneurs. I want more people taking responsibility. Yeah, yeah, you do too. mean, and so then we started the podcast, inside the firm podcast, told the whole story from episode zero. We still do two weekly shows, one kind of like this, and then one where she's me, my business partner on. And, then I started guesting on podcasts, to try to get the word out there about that and everything else we do, and then just network with people. So that's what brought me all the way here.

Christian Brim (03:10)
Mm -hmm. Yes.

I love it. Okay. So, I'm going to ask you a question that you may or may not have considered. so the, name of the podcast is the profitable creative. I have a certain thing in mind when I say a creative entrepreneur, what do you, do you identify as a creative entrepreneur?

Lance Cayko (04:05)
It's, it's obvious. think entrepreneurship by itself actually is a creative endeavor. I've really tried to stress that to folks who, you know, look at me as an architect and they obviously go, yeah, you're like an artist of buildings. You must be super creative. You must be able to like sketch like crazy and you just draw things out of your head. And we can, I mean, we're award -winning architects and all that other stuff. But as I've put on the other business hats, being a general contractor and starting and forming a general contracting business.

starting a real estate business, starting a nonprofit community garden. All of those endeavors have just proved to me that actually it's a creative process. Being a creative, profitable creative is not just about being a creative first. I think it's about an entrepreneur. You have to be creative at every moment. I some people also ask me all the time, you know, I get this question a lot, who want to maybe listen, they listen to our show or just network with me in some certain way.

Christian Brim (04:51)
Hmm.

Lance Cayko (05:04)
and want to start a business. I get a lot of people that come to me for advice like that. I have coffee and like, when's the best time to start a business? And I go, during a great recession or a great depression. And it freaks them out because they, it's, mean, you wouldn't think that's the answer, but, they go, why? I go, thank you. That's a, was hoping you would say that because I just reflected on myself and Alex. it was like, every day we woke up broke, hungry, scared in a corner and going,

Christian Brim (05:29)
Hmm.

Lance Cayko (05:33)
We have to be, every day we had to be creative because of that. It's kind of like taking a piece of coal and putting it under a lot of pressure on it and then we all know what happens after that and then it becomes a diamond. So you know that that's sort of my answer for the creative part of it.

Christian Brim (05:47)
I love that because I think you're right in general that things going easy or predictably maybe doesn't present challenges and therefore doesn't really produce any change, right? I think that

you you shouldn't be in a constant state of hair on fire. That would mean that you've got problems, but there's got to be some balance of like you're successful, but you're still pushing the envelope, right? You're trying new things. You're starting new businesses. You're branching out possibly into verticals, which it sounds like you did. But

I don't think, and my experience really does say this from myself and my colleagues that have reached a certain level of success in business. There's not any satisfaction in that, right? I mean, there's satisfaction in having built a business, but that fire of being an entrepreneur doesn't go away. I remember a conversation with my wife where she was asking like,

I think the question was like, how much is enough? Like, when are you gonna stop? And I said, well, did Rembrandt stop painting? Did Mozart stop composing? No, I mean, it's just what we do, right? And so you have to balance that with, you know, maybe it is a nonprofit where there's not any commercial intent, right? You're not trying to make money off of it, but it still feeds that entrepreneurial fire of yours.

Lance Cayko (07:42)
Yeah, you're right. We don't stop. mean, look at Elon, right? He can't he just he's just addicted to it. It's just like it's so addicting. It's like the best addiction I think, you know, besides maybe something healthy like fishing or hiking or, you know, sport hunting or something like that. But like, yeah, I know, I know. And as you were as you were pontificating there, Christian, I was just I was kind of reminiscing how exciting it is to start a business. You know, you come up with with the logos, you're coming up with the hooks.

Christian Brim (07:47)
out.

Mm

Lance Cayko (08:13)
It's scary like crossing a log on a creek. It's kind of like that, right? Where you're you're going teetering back and forth, but you can see the end goal and you know how to get there. It's incredible. And I get a lot of, I work in like my nonprofit, for example. It's mostly retired folks that are on my board, which makes sense. They have extra time.

Christian Brim (08:18)
Hmm.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Lance Cayko (08:43)
and stuff like that. And one gal was a planner from in a city, right? And so just very analytical, very by the book, has never stepped out of the comfort zone of, because I even asked her, because I asked her what I'm about to say I asked her because she had so much pushback when I just instantly jumped on the opportunity to turn the garden into my own nonprofit. And I was just

Christian Brim (08:47)
Okay.

Lance Cayko (09:11)
There was no fear about how I knew how the legal process has worked and everything. I go, Prue, have you ever had a business? She goes, no. I go, you're a planner, right? She's, yep, I spent my whole life in government. And I went, OK, I get it. There's just, like, how much is what we do? We're born with it. I think there's actually a lot of it. Because my dad, who raised me,

but is not my biological dad. found, I found, and I didn't find that out until I was 33. When I found my biological dad, when I was 33, I'm 41 now, my dad who raised, I really had a good rich dad, poor dad environment. And I didn't, yeah, of course, yeah, I made my children read it last summer and then they had to write a report and I paid them to do it. Like so critical, you know? So the dad who raised me was

Christian Brim (09:50)
Interesting. One of my favorite books.

Lance Cayko (10:06)
not my biological father, was the poor dad. Never took any risks, just worked on the farm, and God bless him for doing it. I wouldn't be here, I would not be the person I am. I probably wouldn't be talking about the garden so much. I wouldn't be that trying to do urban farming if I didn't grow up on that place. Love the man. But then when I found my dad, who's my biological dad, and this was after I had several companies in place and going in that direction, I was like, it was like,

Christian Brim (10:16)
Mm -hmm. Right?

Lance Cayko (10:36)
did I just get the DNA the entrepreneurial DNA? He was he's a multi -millionaire. He has all these companies in Brazil It was like astounding to me how similar we were in the professional world without having any of that sort of contact in that kind of way or influence so I really so like but at the same time it's interesting I'm like but I'm also very happy about growing up in the environment that I did with the poor dad and Not and then being pushed in that direction of like I hated that we had anxiety about money

Christian Brim (11:04)
Mm

Lance Cayko (11:05)
And so now I carry that through and like it really points to like one of my favorite quotes of all time. It's from a rapper. One of my favorite rappers, Kanye West. My mom and dad used to say growing up, they would tell me all the time and it was a cope. Having money isn't everything. And I was like, yeah, sure. Having money isn't everything, right? Like having these conversations is part of actually having everything. Having a meal with my daughter at the end of a long day is kind of having everything. Waking up and breathing. I get it. I get it, guys.

But then Kanye finished it for me about 10 years ago and he said, having money isn't everything but not having it is. And I went, that's right in my soul. That's why I'm also an entrepreneur, because for me it's a reaction of growing up with the anxiety of not having money. I want to be comfortable with what I make such that I don't have an anxiety. That's freedom. I'm buying myself freedom from the anxiety.

Christian Brim (11:57)
Yes. Yes. And I, I've mentioned on this podcast, I, I don't recall the book. but it was on, it was a book on investment advice written for the lay person. And there was only one sentence that was bolded in the whole book. And I'm paraphrasing, but it basically said, you're, you're wealthy when you don't worry about money.

Lance Cayko (12:13)
you

Christian Brim (12:27)
And that is very dependent on the individual because someone could have $500 ,000 or $5 ,000 and not worry about money. Or they could have $50 million in the bank and still worry about money. And I think part of it is being satisfied with what you have because if you're not satisfied,

Lance Cayko (12:29)
Mm.

Christian Brim (12:56)
with what you have. It doesn't really matter how much you have, you're never gonna be satisfied. But it's also about seeing the potential and not making an excuse for not pursuing what you want. Like if you want a private jet, then you can have a private jet. Are you willing to make the sacrifices to do it? But...

you know, are you going to be satisfied when you get the jet? is that, you know, because you can get on that hamster wheel where you're just, you're just making more money or growing just to grow and you don't have any satisfaction.

Lance Cayko (13:40)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a baseline of happiness. And I think I used to listen to NPR a long time ago. I don't anymore. I kind of shut off all media, left, right, up, down, inside, out, all the different facets. But I distinctly remember this report that NPR was talking about at one point. And this is like a 10, 15 year old article or something like that. There was a white paper in a study.

that was done at some university where they showed people's happiness after, at that time, like 75 ,000, making $75 ,000 a year. Once they kept going past that, it never really got, it never really increased that much, right? And it kind of pointed towards the baseline of what you're talking about, for sure, for sure.

Christian Brim (14:17)
Hmm. Yeah.

Well, and that's interesting that you say that because to a person, people that I've spoken with that have gone on mission trips or traveled to poor countries and encountered their people that who are destitute poverty compared to us in the United States across the board.

Lance Cayko (14:28)
you

Christian Brim (14:53)
do tend to be happier, right? And, and I understand what that article is saying is like, once you have your base needs, your housing, your food, all of those things covered, it does remove a lot of anxiety for sure. But at the same, on the same line of thought, I think it also has to be tied to your expectations, right? Because, you know, if you're living in a

Lance Cayko (14:56)
Mm -hmm.

Hmm.

Christian Brim (15:23)
you know, a shack that has dirt floors, no plumbing, you know, like a lot of people in the world do, they can be content in that. And so it, I don't know if it's comparing yourself to the people that are you're around or what, but there's something around that expectation. Like none of us expect to live in a dirt hut with no running water or electricity. We would

we would think ourselves poverty, right? But other people do. So how do you explain that?

Lance Cayko (16:00)
Yeah. Comparison is the thief of joy, right? And that's the tricky part about climbing the ladder as an entrepreneur is if you're successful, obviously, then you make more money, you have more fame, you have more friends, you have everything if you're a successful entrepreneur. It's just like an incredible

Christian Brim (16:01)
Mmm.

Lance Cayko (16:17)
vehicle to put yourself on. But as I climb in that way, we're attracting more and more higher end clients, more and more people where they're coming out of places like California. For instance, one of Elon Musk's mentees ended up hiring us and we designed his $6 million home in Boulder. It's one of the most modern, chic, cool fricking houses in Boulder. But you start comparing yourself just by proxy.

Christian Brim (16:43)
Yes.

Lance Cayko (16:45)
And don't like, I'm not seeking to compare myself to that man. He's great, you know, but at the end of the day, then you see like, wow, they're driving around two cyber trucks and they get this awesome house. And then you go, you know, so even with me, who, who right across the way I've designed to build two houses for my family. They're like as a percentage of, of, of the population, that's a very rare thing to do. I'm going, so it's sort of this checking yourself, right? And you're going like, wait a minute, come on.

Christian Brim (16:54)
Yes.

Yes.

Lance Cayko (17:13)
I've designed and built two houses for my family. How many people even get to do that? So you have to sort of check your thankfulness and gratitude and sort of backwards in that way. But you can't help it. You can't help but compare.

Christian Brim (17:21)
No, you're right. You're 100 % right. And I think as you travel in circles of entrepreneurs, I I know this has been my experience that, you you have success and then you see others that have had, you know, like your success compared to theirs, strictly financially speaking, is inconsequential. And you're like, wow. And you can approach it with envy.

Lance Cayko (17:46)
Mm

Christian Brim (17:51)
or comparison. But to me, I've kind of dealt with it by like, okay, let that be inspirational. Like, you know, don't limit yourself on what you're capable of doing. Because look at what others have done. And that turns it into a positive motivation. But you know, like you said, it or like I said, it really depends

on are you willing to make the sacrifices to do that? You know, and as I've gotten older and I've seen opportunities, I'm like, yeah, I don't want to work that hard. Like, I know what's involved now. mean, when I was younger and I didn't know any better, then I probably would have jumped on it. But now I'm like, you kind of count the cost before you start building.

Lance Cayko (18:32)
Mm

Yeah, I know. was even, you know, even at a micro level. that's sort of like the macro part of it is as a business owner, a CEO, somebody, a leader, somebody forging and being a leader in that kind of way. Like those sacrifices are pretty huge. Right. I mean, there was one point like on our development, our real estate development, where I worked 80 days in a row. I barely saw my children and I'm talking seriously 80 days in a row and I, my health suffered a little bit for it.

I missed a family vacation, stuff like that. But then on the backside, in the end of it, was like, then that's what actually bloomed our construction company, which is now even more profitable than our architecture company. And it was partly because of that sacrifice I made. I couldn't actually get comfortable with the fact that I did that.

get something super positive out of the end of it. I've been on this law of polarity kick for last two years. about a year ago, I was having dinner with my children. I have a son and a daughter. And son is like 19, daughter's 15. And so we can have these a little bit more intellectual conversations with them. they asked, I go, do you guys know what

Christian Brim (19:59)
Right.

Lance Cayko (20:08)
They're like, what makes you sad? makes you what makes you glad? And I go, well, you know what makes me really excited, actually? And I go, what? And I'm like, when something negative happens to me, like when something bad happens and they're like, what? And I was like, well, if something bad happens to me, the universe works with positivity and negativity is like it's called the law of polarity. Like it's it's physics. I know something good is going to happen. And I go, when do you think I get most anxious or sad, you know, worried?

I go, I don't know. I go, when it's just good, good, good, good, good. Like when it's just everything's going too well, especially on a job construction site. We've we talk about this, I swear. Every single project that we start to build. let's say they, you know, if they the three in a row go really well and we go, it's like something's going to fall, right? Like something's going to be pulled out here. And then there'll be these then there'll be some that we start. And like right when we dig the hole in Colorado, the soils are just awful.

Christian Brim (21:06)
Right.

Lance Cayko (21:07)
Like, like they're very expansive. So we have to do all kinds of stuff for the foundations. Sometimes right when we open the hole, it's like, well, that sucks. Now we got to tell the owner like $20 ,000 change order. And it's not even our fault. It's like, we can't totally predict what's underground in that kind of way. yeah, for me, it's sort of a embracing being comfortable with the uncomfortable. You know, I think that's one big phrase that I try to remind myself about too. Yeah.

Christian Brim (21:17)
Right.

Yeah, there isn't a lot of comfort in being an entrepreneur, although my experience is that we sometimes intentionally and unintentionally create discomfort that's unnecessary. Your statement about soil just reminded me, I have a dear friend that's an architect and he spent over a decade working in London.

And he moved back here to Oklahoma City and I was asking him, you know, what's the difference between building here and there? And he was like, well, I had a job site that was shut down for a year because they, we reached a plague pit and I'm like, a what? And he said, well, it was a burial site for plague victims. And so they had to shut the whole thing down to come in and

know, sterilize it guys and hazmat suits and all this. And I'm like, OK, well, you don't get that here. You might get red clay, but you know, you're not going to get plague pits.

Lance Cayko (22:26)
God.

Christian Brim (22:36)
Yeah, doesn't it? Well, that's the English for you. You know, they always put a nice spin on things. It has to be prim, prim. So tell me what is the most, the thing that you've accomplished that you're most proud of? Business, personal, whatever.

Lance Cayko (22:36)
It sort of has like a strangely nice ring to it. Plague Pit!

man, I haven't, I've stuck to my word of not laying anybody off. So, so, I, and I, I would just tell him my girlfriend this who's not an entrepreneur. And she actually venerate, she's an architect too, but she's not an entrepreneur. You know, she's actually very happy being a, a driver of the cogs, right? She's a project architect and all of that. Now she's kind of, she's a professor too, actually. but we were, we were talking about this and, and, and I was like, well,

Christian Brim (23:03)
Mmm.

Lance Cayko (23:32)
It's that where that comes from about not laying anybody off to comes from that negative. like when I moved here and I got that first internship, I lasted nine months and then I got laid off and it was because of bad entrepreneurs. there was bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad

Christian Brim (23:45)
Mm

Right.

Lance Cayko (23:57)
And that's part of the podcast too, is we're really trying to encourage the architect community. Like you need to embrace being an entrepreneur. Like, come on, you're already a creative individual. So when they laid me off, I never forgot that sting and how awful it felt and how helpless I felt. And then I called my grandma sobbing and I went home to my wife who had, we had just had a newborn. like, just after graduating at the top of our class and being thinking the whole world was set up for me to just like all the dominoes that are to knock it down and everything.

So that has been like honestly my number one goal that I've been proud of to be able to uphold for now 15 years is I've never laid anybody off because we don't have enough work and it ties into the sacrifice actually. It's me and Al making when we first started up the business not overpaying ourselves, sacrificing even some salary here and there and just paying ourselves the lowest amount and then doing you and then after that trying to get enough profit at the end then we kind of make it up for ourselves and

Christian Brim (24:51)
Right?

Lance Cayko (24:55)
know, dividends and all of that. So that's probably my proudest part of it actually is really creating jobs for people out of nowhere because we had no contacts either when they moved here. I mean, it really was a true architectural startup. a lot of architects are very well networked and that's how they do it. There's glad handing out museum events at the AIA or whatever. We had nothing like that. We had to just forge the path. It was like pushing a boulder up a mountain every single day.

But it made us so strong and so lean and so mean. Now that we're kind of primed in that way and we have a network and things are flowing a little bit better. And then, you know, the other way we've been doing it recently is through the serial entrepreneurialism. And that is like we have a construction company and our architects can bill against the construction company to do construction administration. It offsets how much I have to pay myself for F9 so I can like if I need to.

certain points if I need to shrink that down a little bit just to help cash flow I know I'll make it up in the construction like we have an ecosystem and you know that's it was a react

Christian Brim (25:55)
You're the Rockefeller of construction. You've got the vertical integration down. I love it. You do the development, the construction, the architecture. I guess next you need a real estate agency.

Lance Cayko (26:13)
Yeah, right? I'd go after that license for sure.

Christian Brim (26:13)
I like, I love what you said, one about not laying people off because I think, you know, one of the things that, that made me more cautious as an entrepreneur is realizing that it's not just my family that I affect, but you know, the 20 or so people that I employ and their families and like that, that's a weighty thing. and, and it should.

way into your risk -making decisions because I feel a certain responsibility. Like, I don't want them to go without because I was stupid, right? The other thing I liked about what you said is, you know, these architects that aren't businesses, and I think this can apply to any entrepreneur because it seems that

entrepreneurs start a business because they have a skill. Not always, but you know, a big chunk of the time. And they identify with that skill. It may be a profession, it may be architecture, it may be accounting, a law or engineer or a coder or whatever. Or, you know, a videographer or a cinematographer. You could identify with that first.

But I cannot remember who, I think it may have been Perry Marshall that said this. He said, you have to think of yourself as an entrepreneur first with a certain set of skills. So Lance, you're a entrepreneur with architectural skills, which is completely different than saying you're an architect.

Lance Cayko (27:57)
Cool, yeah.

Yeah, I like every time I do one of these interview, you know, a podcast like this, and I guess on a show, I feel like I pull out one good phrase and that one new phrase, there's been a lot of good phrases, one new good phrase, and I'm going to use that from now on. I'm an entrepreneur with architectural carpentry, general contracting, real estate development skills. Like that's fantastic. yeah, it's, it's right. Yeah. Well, well,

Christian Brim (28:26)
Yeah, it's not mine.

Perry Marshall, he's the author of 80 20 marketing and sales. His is an interesting story. He's my age, maybe a little older, but he was educated as an electrical engineer and went into sales of product in the electronics space. And then,

Lance Cayko (28:34)
I'm going to look it up. I think you mentioned the name who maybe said that. Perry Marshall.

Okay.

Christian Brim (29:03)
became a full -time marketer. So he's not your typical marketer. He's very analytical and he does deep dives on fractals and mathematics and yeah it's interesting guy. So I think you kind of hinted at this but I wanted to dive a little deeper into it. What did you learn about money growing up?

Lance Cayko (29:20)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah, the hint, right? The having money isn't everything but not having it is. Yeah. What I was taught about money is that, and then I was raised very Catholic. I'm still very Catholic, but one of the things that they, know, that is literally, you know, money is the root of all evil. So that's kind of true. That's kind of true. Like, like it's tied to it, I guess. I mean, I always try to like think of like, can I twist that phrase to suit my brain a little bit better? And the way I think about it is, is like, it's tied to it, but it's, it's just

Money, like we have to have some kind of means of exchange. can't just barter all day long. I can't trade a building for a car or stuff like that in that kind of way. So there was a big negative aura around money when I was growing up.

Christian Brim (30:06)
Right.

Hmm.

Like, so, like having money was somehow immoral or evil.

Lance Cayko (30:27)
No, it wasn't actually just having capital. It was the pursuit of capital to get to the point where then you could have the things that you wanted without having anxiety around having the things, like over -leveraging yourself. So they had some good lessons in there and something like that. It's like we were talking about credit swords the other day in the office and my dad, it brought up the memory of my dad and his credit score, which is very good.

Christian Brim (30:29)
I see, okay.

Lance Cayko (30:57)
But then as I started to have my own credit score and use it and leverage it to become a real estate developer and a real estate investor, it takes a lot of capital. It takes a lot of risk. I mean, you just put your butt on the line for like a million, like three million. Our loan is like $3 million. It's a crazy, it's a large amount of money before they printed all the money in the pandemic, by the way. So now it's probably like 6 million. and he would brag to me all the time about his growing up, you know, like, I have this eight 20 credit score or something. And finally, maybe like four or five years ago,

It came up again at like Thanksgiving or something like that. everybody's kind of just me, my brother, my dad are talking about somehow credit scores. And I go, yeah, mine's like, don't know, 700s or something like that. And they're like, ours is like 820 blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, that's because you don't use it. You're not leveraging it. And isn't that kind of indicative of life and just in general is like somewhere in the goopy gray middle is really the answer and the magic. It's not this left, right, up, down, black, white.

Christian Brim (31:38)
You

Lance Cayko (31:54)
you know extreme in any other way it's picking from those extremes and then forming this goopy gray ball that really makes sense and helps the world grow.

Christian Brim (31:59)
Yeah, I think, you know.

I think that the reason why most people are have this anxiety around money is fear driven, right? And it's fear of, you know, doing without. But I think that anytime you're motivated by fear, I mean, it's not that that's a bad motivator because it can motivate you to do good things.

But to me, fear is more closing. know, like it shuts down options. It keeps you from looking at possibles. Like I said, the people that I know that are uber successful, the money hasn't changed who they are. It's...

I think it amplifies who they are, right? It doesn't, you know, because you see all the stories about lottery winners and they're broke again, you know, a year or two later, because why? Because they didn't change, right? They remained who they were. And I think that when it comes to being profitable as an entrepreneur, as a creative, it's really about getting comfortable.

Lance Cayko (33:10)
Mm.

Christian Brim (33:33)
with your relationship with money and being intentional about it. So many people are reactive with money because they're not being intentional about it and they're working from some deep emotional space that they don't really even understand what it is, right?

Lance Cayko (34:00)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right, it's yeah, the fear, mean the fear just kind of drives, especially now too, with like the hyper politics and weird environment we're in just globally and all that kind of stuff about how it, how it, how it, I think you're right, that it's it's a fear, it's like, it's like misplaced intentions because of the fear sort of idea. Yeah.

Christian Brim (34:15)
Yeah, yeah. As Yoda said, fear leads to the dark side. you're going to, you know, what is it right now in your business that, is, is on your mind first thing when you wake up or, on your mind when you're going to sleep. I call it a struggle, a problem that you're trying to solve. What, what's, what's that focal point for you, Randy?

Lance Cayko (34:50)
Well, I'll answer it in reverse. I actually go to bed without having to think about all the businesses and everything. I have successfully trained myself to shut it off at about five or six each day. Very important for anybody who wants to be that entrepreneur first with the skill. Because I think that's where some of the people with the skill first and the entrepreneur second start to go down a really bad spiral is they can't shut it off. And you got to figure out.

Christian Brim (35:13)
Mmm.

Lance Cayko (35:19)
because discipline equals freedom. So you're disciplining yourself to have the freedom to not have to worry about that kind of stuff. And I work a lot, probably about an average of about 50 hours a week. But I do also shut it off on the weekends. The last two weekends have been amazing. I went up to Minneapolis and Wisconsin and went camping with my girlfriend. It was great. There was meanwhile running.

several seven -figure firms three seven -figure firms and then We got before that one of my buddies from college came out and like you said Should the money amplify you the money should amplify you are so we rented a side -by -side and went four -wheeling up and down the mountains It was fantastic so I don't I don't worry about that part the waking up part though is Akin to my routine. I think that's where also I think it's important for people to have a really

strict routine in the mornings if they're an entrepreneur. You have to really center yourself and ground yourself and get ahead of the world. So the first two hours of the morning I call them golden hours and they're golden like literally because you know the sunrise and everything like that but they're golden because they're quiet and if you and if you can get ahead of everybody else then you're controlling the day for you versus let so my routine is that you know I'm wake up wake up at about five

Christian Brim (36:27)
Mm

Lance Cayko (36:44)
Go down to go down to the kitchen, big glass of water with electrolytes, put on coffee, sit down and stretch and meditate and pray the rosary. Then after that coffee's done. And then I'm at my desk for two hours from, 5 30 to 7 30 before I have to take my daughter to school. And those two hours are so absolutely critical for getting ahead with the emails and addressing maybe some that some that fell through the cracks between between after the hours. I didn't address them, you know, five to seven and stuff like that. That way I'm ahead of everybody.

And then I'm also trying to do my most creative tasks in those hours, with the help of caffeine, obviously. But that's where some of the best marketing ideas, some of the best architectural designs we come up with, when it's just really still and quiet, that's how I start and usually end the day.

Christian Brim (37:28)
I absolutely love that the Perry Marshall calls that Renaissance time. He talks about having to have that space where you're not inundated with the tactical of, of, you know, running a business or life. He's actually doing a, and I was this close to going, but I just said not to that.

Lance Cayko (37:41)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (37:58)
He's doing a seminar with Richard Koch, one of the Koch brothers in Portugal. And he was talking about Richard Koch's routine. he said he spends the first two to three hours of his day working on his two or three largest problems. And then he goes for a walk or a hike or whatever. And that...

allows him to one put his energy into the most important things, right? The things that need him to solve as opposed to others to solve. But then having the space to let his brain work on those problems subconsciously, right? So you're not continuing to try and process it in your cerebral, but you kind of engage your whole brain. You know, that's why people get...

brilliant insights in the showers because they're in a happy place and their brain disconnects, right? But being intentional with your routine and time, I think is awesome advice. So I'm going to ask one final question and you don't have to answer it if you don't. We can edit it out. So you mentioned previous wives. How did...

Lance Cayko (39:01)
Mm -hmm.

Christian Brim (39:23)
being an entrepreneur affect your personal relationships, specifically your marriage.

Lance Cayko (39:38)
My first wife, it actually got a little better. Once I became an entrepreneur, after getting laid off, it became a little bit better because I was making more money. And then I would try to make her happy by saying like, hey, yeah, fine, go get the clothes. I don't care. Here's 500 bucks. No big deal. So it made it a little bit better for a while.

Christian Brim (39:42)
Okay.

Lance Cayko (40:01)
But that relationship was just kind of doomed from the beginning. So it didn't matter if I had more money and or I could be more flexible with the children or anything like that. It sort of actually exacerbated some of the issues at the end of the day. Kind of like what you're saying about how the money just should increase you as a person, add on to it rather than sort of change you in that other way. For the second marriage, I think my last wife would agree if she ever hears this.

that she, what I'm about to say and that is like, I think I leveled her up. So, you you mentioned that we should, maybe one more vertical integration would be for us to be realtors. She's a realtor. So she got to sell our development, all the units that we didn't sell and stuff like that. There was, there's a lot of books that I have brought home that I, and when I do guesting or I guess her on my show, they'll send me the free book and then I'll read it. And they're usually very good.

I'm pretty picky about who will be on the show and stuff like that, much like you. And then I give her that book and it changes her life in a really positive way. Or she just sees me and by proxy felt much more motivated. Because there was a certain point, we had a blended family. And that's what ended up bringing us together and that's what tore us apart, frankly. was just like the kids, once they hit puberty and they weren't these cute little adorable kids anymore,

Christian Brim (41:13)
Interesting.

You

Lance Cayko (41:28)
Then they didn't want to hang out with each other anymore. And before that, it was like Brady Bunch. I mean, we were just this six -person family, which is kind of rare these days. We would go on these family trips, and the people would just come up to our table. They'd go like, your kids are so well -behaved. Thank you. And we're like, thank you, stuff like that. So I think that's probably how I affected her in that way. It was mostly positive, honestly, at the end of the day. I think we leveled each other up. And then, I mean, without her?

When I was 30, because I would have been 33, yeah, 34, I didn't have the kind of capital I needed to buy the land that would enable us to build this, design and build this custom literal Brady house. And she enabled that, but then I did all the architecture and the engineering for free because it's my family, right? And she got to live and she still lives in that house. And now that she has increased claustrophobia, just her own stuff, it's a house that's glass, obviously. I'm an architect who likes modernism.

Christian Brim (42:10)
Right?

Lance Cayko (42:27)
And the house is good for her health. And then since the divorce and having dated a lot actually lately over the past year is like, I like to think even the girlfriends that I dated for a bit and then broke up or dated for a little bit longer and broke up had a really good positive effect on them. I'm just trying, like my preferred pronouns on LinkedIn are positive, reactionary.

Christian Brim (42:49)
you

Lance Cayko (42:56)
Right, which is kind of indicative of like this whole conversation of me saying like all the negative stuff. I want to positively react to that. So I think that's how that's how it affected it.

Christian Brim (43:00)
Yeah, I think I've often said my wife is not an entrepreneur. We did work together off and on over the time in the business, but we each fired each other multiple times. think as an entrepreneur, I think, and I've only really come to see this after lots of years that

We've got to be kind of difficult to live with. mean, like, we're not your normal people. We're not as predictable. We're, you know, and that's got to be a strain on someone that doesn't think like that. But I appreciate your sharing your experience. Any final words? How do we reach you? How do we find you?

Lance Cayko (43:51)
Yeah, sure.

Well, I mentioned LinkedIn there and I will link in with anybody and my name is spelled L -A -N -C -E, last name, psycho, C -A -Y -K -O. If you just, the only one on LinkedIn. If you're listening to this, you want to link in with me, I will accept pretty much anybody. If you want to listen to the show, go to insidethefirmpodcast .com. You can find it on YouTube, all the usual places. And if you want to follow what we do architecture wise or interested in ever engaging with us on a professional level,

Then I go to F9Productions .com, sign up for our newsletter. We send out one per month and keep everybody abreast.

Christian Brim (44:24)
I forgot to ask this, how do you come up with F9 productions?

Lance Cayko (44:35)
It's the, was the, when we started the firm, because we were such baby architects, like we didn't, we weren't in firms long enough to get anything built. So all we had was like photorealistic renderings and the software we would use to produce those at that time. The hot key for that was F9. So you'd hit F9 and then it would execute the rendering. was like, we're F9 productions.

Christian Brim (44:50)
I love that. When I first heard it, I'm like, being from Oklahoma, I'm like, that's not a tornado rating, because they only go up to F5. So I don't know what an F9 would look like. that makes perfect sense. Lance, I very much appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us. If you like what you're listening to, follow the podcast, send us a comment, an email, we'd love to hear from you. For now, ta ta.

Lance Cayko (45:08)
Yeah.