Be careful who you pissed off, because some of us are still burned. And now we'll never stop in that kind of a way, right?
Hello architect Nation. I'm Enoch Sears and this is the show where you'll discover tips, strategies and secrets for running a more impactful and profitable architectural practice. If there have been frustrated that you can't find the product data that you're looking for, you might be using the wrong search engine. broad searches result in consumer products out of date information and websites that oftentimes may hide or not have the information that you need at your fingertips. If you need specifications, CAD, BIM, etc. are cat.com Is your search engine, find and download the up to date product data you need fast, or cat.com is free requires no registration. So go ahead, try it today. That's our cat Arca t.com. My guest today is Lance psycho. He's the co founder of f9 Productions. We've had him here on the show before you may recognize him from the popular inside the firm Podcast. Today we're going to talk about dealing with a grind in architecture. So without further ado, here is today's show. Lance How you doing?
Doing great. Thanks for having me, Nick. Absolutely.
So Lance is a principal founder, co founder of f9 Productions. You may know him from the illustrious podcast inside the firm plus some of their other media media activities they have out there and Lance and I've been buddies friends for a long time. Recently Lance put something out on social media as he frequently does. By the way if you're a fisherman I definitely go check out fishing with Lance which is Lance aside site off his little site up a freakin awesome catching like these huge pulling out these huge trout from this frozen lake and stuff. I'm like, Man, I go to the ocean. I don't catch fish that big. So but today, we're here to talk about a topic that he posted recently in social media, which was he said that he gets up and he grinds. And then now he gets up and he still grinds. It was referring to what were you referring to there? Lance? What was that post all about? It was just short little quote you posted? Yeah,
well, I recently won the I was nominated for most influential business leader in in northern Colorado, there was five different categories. I'm obviously in the you know, construction, the AC category, architecture, engineering, construction, and I ended up winning it, which was kind of blew my mind. And so it was huge. Because 15 years ago, I was laid off from a firm down here in Boulder, Colorado, to know that what it took to get there to win that kind of award. And after after sort of being down in the dumps, that's, that's where it comes into the grind of the whole thing. And so for me, it was a lot of waking up at 430, waking up at 530, every single almost every single day, and grinding, trying to be ahead of the game, going out of the box in terms of the ways that we would go out and try to get our first clients go above and beyond for our first clients, and all those sorts of things. So that's, that's where the post, that's where it came from. Because I ended up putting in, you know, in I basically said in the post and like the sub thread of it, that and you know how I did it? Or do you know how I do you know, you know how this happened. And it was because I got up and I grind. I grind it every single day almost every single day, you know. So that's, that's what it takes. I think this is the that's the missing part of what people maybe do or don't understand about entrepreneurs who end up being successful. There's a lot of entrepreneurs that are sure you're an entrepreneur, if you I mean, maybe you've started up 15 businesses, but none of them have ever taken off. They never get out of that seven year startup incubation period, and flourish into something good. You're still an entrepreneur, but then the ones who actually make it work like the Elon Musk's of the world, who have whatever company they start on, you know, it's almost successful, but what they're not seeing and only some people know, I think like Elon, fanboys, like me and owl, know that love this guy sleeping like four hours a day to three hours a day. He's just constantly grinding and never stops. Even if he's walking around. Like I do this all the time. I if I'm hiking up to some of these fishing adventures and stuff like that it gives I'm, I have my notepad in my phone. Sure, I don't have any service. But I'm usually either like listening to a book, or I am thinking and dictating to my phone about a business idea or other things that come to me. Because an entrepreneur just never stops. If we do stop, I think then we get actually that's actually when we get the anxiety and we get uncomfortable. If there's just something in us that feels like we have to we have to continually we're never stopping we know that we have to continually improve. And we know that there's people that depend on us too, in a big way. I mean, if me and Al are out there selling and we are bringing work in and helping the firm expand, then how can we continue to keep people employed, give them raises all that stuff.
You know, it's a delicate balance what you just mentioned about If we're not doing business development then so there's one of my mentors once told me, he said, Every day I wake up, and every day I'm a little bit stressed and worried about where the next product is going to come from. And he's like, and that's it. He mentioned that that's healthy for him. In other words, like I'm every single day, I'm thinking about where's the next project coming from? Where's the next money income stream coming from? Who am I going to sell next he he's taken on the identity of there's two things we talk about in smart practice, which is becoming a number one becoming a rainmaker but beneath becoming a rainmaker, of course, for those of you who aren't in the US, Rainmaker basically means you're an income producer, you're someone that makes it rain you bring in the business. So Rainmaker in a business is the guy that brings on the clients brings in the contracts brings in the money without that there's no there's no business. So below that, Lance, we talk about two subcategories of kind of being or personally you need to be a closer and a marketer or another flip that around a marketer and a closer Yeah,
Say it Say it again. Do I need to be both? Is that was that was a question? Yep, yep.
Yep, you need to be both. So you when you're waking up in the morning, like in those early days, you realize maybe you didn't think about it this way. But you're like, I need a market and I need to close. I need to get myself out there get visible in front of people. And then I need to turn those relationships into work into commitments. Oh,
100% Yeah, it's me. Yeah. The the synthesis word with that as I think it's like your prospecting. So like, that's the way I think about it. And, and this is also sort of a driving and then walking around in the city where there is service type of thing. So a lot of times when I'm going back and forth between either teaching at CU Boulder or North Dakota State or going in between sales meetings, or something like that, I sort of have this working Rolodex in my head, about people I should be calling I should be getting on the phone with I should be touching base with I should ask them if they have any questions about our proposal. If they'd like, we, if they're ready to move forward, is there any way I can help do that. And then and then that's kind of coupled with like, there's a book I've read recently that I recommend every entrepreneur reads, because that has everything to do with marketing. It's called Brain glue. I thought it was one of the best books, I've read about how to do taglines or advertising. Since maybe, like Made to Stick I'd said Made to Stick would be like a companion book to that one. Because the brain glue is like it gets you in a silly mood. So I listened to that one. So it's this constant juggle of exactly what you said is like, I get up, and I still feel that hunger. And I think that's a big part of it. It's why when people say, but when I go do other shows, and guests on those, they'll ask me what is you know, maybe one piece of advice you would give any entrepreneur or somebody that's thinking about doing it, jumping off and starting their own businesses, and like, there's no better time to start a business, then maybe a Great Depression, or a great recession. If like, you just gotta jump, it's actually probably I think it's detrimental. If you're starting in like a boom, for sure. Because you don't have that kind of same kind of hunger. You don't, you don't, you're not forced to be lean in that kind of way. And you just don't have that mindset that's seared into you at that point, when you need to do that. So that's what I like to do. Like, I have a friend who recently finally started her own business. And she one of the things I was super proud about her was is she, as soon as as soon as she finally got the right things in place to be able to be able to start it, which was basically she needed a sales funnel. And when she kind of identified that sales funnel, she just said up, I'm, I'm firing all my cleaning clients, like today. And I go okay, then so she was instantly hungry. And then was like this sort of piece of coal, right? That's pushed with all the pressure. And then that's how the diamonds are made.
I love that analogy, like the diamonds is such a great analogy. And yeah, we can we can see this with companies and companies have been successful. Some of the some of the best and strongest companies have started in adversity. One thing is that I've always been a study of are really a student of like you first of all, I'm resonate a lot with what you're saying that is like, I wonder I've never actually heard another person say this, to me reflect this back, that they're always listening to something but like, same thing with me do when I'm going on my run when I'm at the gym, if there's the latest podcast, I'm listening to if there's the latest book, if there's the latest seminar, I invest in coaching groups, so I'll go back and listen to the group calls to those coaching groups. I'm like always feeding the fertile the fertile substance of my mind, you know, constantly constantly thinking about improvement and growing and growing and keeping on improving. You're right when when things come easy to us. We get soft, we get soft. And when there's when there's low competition. When I look back to my athletic career, anything that I've done in life when there wasn't competition, I didn't rise as high. And so this is one of the it's one of the frustrating things, but it's also one of the truths about business or excellence in every area is that the harder it is The more you're gonna grow
percent Yeah, and I'm trying to get my staff to understand that, because we're hitting we're in a growth period right now. The we invested quite a bit of money with a pretty high end marketing agency and over the last 1415 months, same PR firm that does Tucker Carlson's stuff like pretty big deal. And for us, it was a just a giant financial investment, time investment, all that but we're seeing us move up so high in the rankings now for if you just search for like Colorado architect or residential architect and stuff. And we've had the best, this isn't even a brag this is just kind of me explaining what's going on his like, in the last two months at the beginning of this year, it's the first time it's 2024. It's the first time I've ever we've ever had this many sales inquiries, and just inquiries in interest that this at the beginning of the business cycle. So I'm like astounded, but at the same time going, Okay, I'm having to sort of refocus and re coach, my upper level staff who are managing people, and starting to manage even more people that I understand that you feel like we don't have enough time to work on these projects. And I'm might have to ask you to work a little bit more, which is not usual for us. But I promise you, it's temporary. It's a temporary pain. And we can hire new graduates like it's a very strange, weird area we're in right now in like the middle of March, new people graduate in May, great, then I can bring them in, and we have more horsepower and everything. But I can't think of the same thing on the construction side of things. Because we're also general contractors, is like the demand for us is so high right now that I was trying to explain to my superintendent, that he wants everything to sort of be just like, we have a cut and dry system about how this how this works, when it comes to taking on a new project and be in leadership positions. And then replacing that lower level Carpenter, formerly lower level carpenter with another carpenter and stuff is that there's no perfect time for when this happens ever. I just I've been doing this for 15 years now. And the architecture side of things, business wise, as an entrepreneur, I've just never seen a perfect growth pattern. It's like, oh, gosh, now we have too much work. Okay, we have to figure out how to get it done. Or we have too little work. And then I need to figure out how to get them get get more work. It's there's never just like perfect, steady flow with no deadlines and all the other things. And so I understand that, that growth pattern and the trajectory and the strain, right, it's just like lifting weights. I'm not oh, I need to lift more weight. So Okay, I gotta get stronger. It's gonna take more work, it's gonna take more reps and take more eating, eating better, all that kind of stuff. And I understand that, but now my are sort of mean Alex's struggle is like, Oh, crap, we have to get staff to understand this, like, how do we how do you explain that to staff? And, you know, and try to promise them and caress them and sue them through that whole process. It's interesting. I mean, I just finished Patrick Mimi's Ah, okay, book, The, what the heck is how to design a world class firm? And what it what an inside? What a beautiful inside. Look, I was going to have him on the show on our show in a couple of weeks again, second time, you'll be on there. And I've got questions for him lined up myself, because I'm just like, what a beautiful inside look at one of the world's biggest architecture firms ever. And it was so reassuring to hear some of the things that they were talking about as like, as somebody who has a small firm, you know, only only like 11 people, compared to those guys of 1100. And there were some things that I that they stated where I was like, oh, cool, we were already doing that. Wow, I can't believe he Okay, wasn't doing that for the first 20 years. That's reassuring. And then there were other things were like, oh, shoot, we need to do that. And I hadn't even thought of that. What a good what a good example of, of what we shouldn't shouldn't be doing in that kind of way. So it's I think, Comparison is the thief of joy. But definitely there's got to you got to have some kind of comparison, just to see if maybe you're doing things if it's okay, if there's some of the things you're doing. Because business is experimentation has asked analysis the other day is like, how much of business do you think is I? How much do you think we're experimenting, like, on a percentage basis, you know, with a new marketing idea, or, or, for instance, I had this other client who came in the other day, and they they said we need this done in, you know, X amount of time. And I go well, there's here's the fee for that X and they go or for the reality X, and they go nope, I need x I go and I asked when I told one of my other one of my senior architects here I was like, Do you want to do want to have some fun and he's like, What do you mean I'm like, let's business if we're not having fun either. This is business sucks. Like it's half this should it should be fun every day should be fun. He's like as like, let's see if they're open to us doubling our fees and having our time he's like, No way. I'm like come on. Come on, dude. Let's try it. I was like you guys like we don't have technically need need the work, do we? And he goes, No. And I go well, but what if we double our fees and half the time, and he went through the experiment with me, it was actually quite a quite a bit of negotiation. But it was super fun. And then they went for it and everything. And we got done with stress. And I go, Thanks for trusting me, I'm giving you a raise when I get back in a promotion. And I did actually I gave him I gave him one of the highest salaries that we've, we've given out so far in our 15 years or something like that. And then it also helped me gain his trust a little bit more even more with like business experimentation like that. So I'm digressing here, but I get really excited. That's one of the best parts, I think it's like the little experiments and all the experiences, it'll it ceases to amaze me to like, dealing with the general public. Some people I mean, yes, it's difficult, but at the same time, it's like, oh, my gosh, I feel like I'm going to experience like, I don't know how many you perfectly unique. If you could, you could argue there's unique people, like every single person who is unique, like God made perfectly unique, but at the same time like that, we're sort of categorical. And I feel like if I keep doing this long enough, I'm gonna hit every category of every person, personality type.
Probably so yeah, you know, it's business is not a straight line. And that's one of the, that's one of the most fun things about it, which is that it's, there's always variety happening, you can never tell what's going to happen, you can guess that you're going to hire this person, they're going to work out. But you don't know what's going to happen in three months. Right, you might have a project get cancelled or something like that. So there's this element of being a leader where the uncertainty, I had a really good friend of mine, he taught me something once that really thought was quite profound. guy pulls in seven figures a year, so successful businessman. And he said, Enoch, here's the thing. He said, I make sure because we were talking about the need for certainty, which is kind of kind of the underlying thing that you're referencing here that sometimes in business, we want certainty, we want it to be a straight line, we want it to be smooth sailing, we want it to be like, one of the deadlines is going to finally get easy. When When am I going to have a match between how much capacity we have and how much work we're bringing in? When is it just gonna be you know?
Or here's in recently, when am I finally gonna be able to command the fees. And I know we deserve for this certain typology that we've proven ourselves to be experts in in Colorado and like, come on, at some point. We're getting referred for this perfect typology. It's like, stop balking at the fees. This is what it takes? Well,
and that's another good point. Like, is there ever going to be a client who doesn't balk at the fees? Let's face it, sometimes there are, right. But this is another thing like with sales and with negotiation, a lot of times we go into this thinking that there's one single answer that there's a perfect match between the price we can charge and the price the person is going to pay. When in reality, there's no such thing. It's always a negotiation. Right? So if you have someone who accepts your fee right off the bat, you probably didn't charge enough. Yeah, like if they if they don't, if they don't like, look a little dismayed if they don't kind of push back on your fee, then you left money on the table?
I think so too. I think that's generally true. Yeah. And you gotta be prepared to defend it. I mean, it even comes down to invoices, there's invoices, you know, because we do like general contracting, we're open book so that so what we end up invoicing can change. Because we just explained that, look, there's conditions on the site that sometimes we can't predict, you know, we open up the we start excavating, and we find a big rock or something like that, in that kind of way. So it's sort of a book ending of the whole negotiation, depending on how your business operates. But yeah, I agree with you. It's got to be some pushback. It should, I think, Tyler Sue Amala was telling me the other day, and LinkedIn or wherever chatting about that, or just reading something he wrote, I think is be honest post about if you're, if your fee doesn't make you even just a little bit uncomfortable. And it's kind of relates back to the growth part of it, right? It's like, Yeah, I mean, you should be looking at your fees every year. Like, am I charging enough? Should I be charging more, there's inflation, we've gained more experience, so we bring more value to the table. So if you're not, again, experimenting and pushing on the edge, from time to time, then I don't think you're doing the right thing. You can't get stagnant. And
how do you how do you guys determine what is like how you set your fees? Like do you work towards from from a goal that you have a certain profit percentage you want to run the business? Or how do you guys do it? Yeah,
there's definitely that it's a it's a complicated equation, which sucks, because it's like, should it be should it be simple? Or should it not be? And I'm not sure I'm not sure it ever can be simple for maybe a service based business like us, architect or builder. So definitely, we have a goal, we always Alex and I are trying to strive for between 25 and 30%. Minimum for a profit for an architecture firm. And the statistics on a very up probably have one in your head to where it's like I think the average some people say it's 13 Some people say 15% Oh, it's definitely under 20% Is the IS is the average
for sure. And you take out the large from small firms, it's more like eight and even That's refreshing.
Zero, those are insane razor thin profits. That's like a restaurant, right? And the restaurant freaked me out. Like, if that's true wieneke, which I believe it is, in terms of the small firms being in that kind of a margin, I used to say restaurant tours had the biggest components out of any entrepreneur on the planet because they have such razor thin margins. But if, if the architects are doing the same crap, then I guess maybe they're tied with them in that kind of way. That's not That's not good, though. I think we should all be striving for that. So yes, we start with that sort of in mind. And then it's like, okay, how do we start either if our goal is 25 to 30%, or 30%? Plus, I was two years ago, we hit 30%. Plus, we're super happy about it. We are I mean, that is the North Star and North Star is like, stay 30%? Plus, it's like, okay, then how do you? How do you start to think about if I can get there, and I think you can examine some hourly rates, that's a pretty easy one. So you go, okay. Let's say my senior staff, they're there. They cost me this much per hour, you break the whole thing down. And then you go, okay, what are we charging per hour? If we're doing any kind of hourly stuff? And then and then there's another matrix where you're going, alright, so if x amount of likes, let's say, a house costs, you know, $1 million? And then what are what is the average firm charging, percentage wise at the construction budget, and you can start to examine that number, and then kind of do some reverse math from there. There's that way of doing it. We'll also we basically are examining the fees, I think, from like three or four different perspectives and like, so another perspective is, we'll have a spreadsheet up. And we'll just calculate, okay, how many, how much actual time do we think this is going to take to do it, and then multiply that final number by a percentage for the profit, and maybe just like, oh, a pad week, it's gonna take an extra week, or month or something to do this project. And then we're constantly looking at the books, that's probably the fourth metric for the whole thing. So in real time, at the end of every month, we have our bookkeeper, do a financial health sort of audit on it, and I forget the acronym that ours, say, a KPI so we do a KPI spreadsheet. So we understand what our key performance indicators are in that kind of way. And I will say that, do everybody listening to this? And going, Oh, my gosh, that's like, that's like, how am I going to do this as a startup, we didn't do it as a startup, like, we're out of the startup phase, I gotta be clear about that. We, you're technically supposed to be out of the startup phase about year seven. And I think that is kind of when we started to grow up to and start getting those kind of key performance indicators and metrics in there, and really starting to look at them in that way. So I think it's, it's totally okay, for those first five to seven years to just kind of fly by the seat of your pants, you have a good system and framework and for sure, but you don't really have to have it all figured out right away, you're just trying to survive in those first five to seven years, right. And if you're doing the fundamental things of getting up every day, before this before the sun gets up doing the grunt mental grinding, trying to stay ahead of people constantly learning, like we talked about with the books or the business coaching and all that kind of good stuff. When you get when you get to where we're at finally, now I would say you know, past year seven, then you start looking at the fees in like three or four different ways and deciding where it should be. And then then ultimately, it's sort of the fifth way, which is completely out of our control is okay, we put together the protocol, we send it out there into the public realm, then the market is going to tell us if it's going to bear our fees or not. It's as simple as that. Like, it is mostly still of free enterprise in America. So that's who's going to tell us if we're too high or too low, or and all the good stuff. I just got off the phone with my civil engineer. And he and I were just talking about this. And I was he was like, I was like, how much time? How much more time? Do you think our our multiplier, like if you had to multiply your feet? What do you think our fee is? He goes off, usually four to five, isn't it? And I'm not really that kind of depends. And then we started just kind of talking shop about the whole thing. And he was like, Yeah, we're kind of in the mix right now of if we're competing against the really big firms, he said, and we our fees are too low, then they're not like they're not high enough, and they won't take us seriously. And he goes into that same time. I'm also competing with like the tire the bottom of the barrel civil engineers in Colorado, just like one or two man shops who can, you know, come in they their overheads very low, so they can come in lower. So works right scale of economies. And he goes, will bid on those projects, and then we're way too high. He goes, so I can't say he goes, it's just a tricky equation. And that's I do I do think Al and I and f9 are sort of in that category in certain categories where it's like, Yep, we're going against the big guys. And then maybe we came in too low and that you learn say look like too cheap or something like that. There's something about it. And then we're going against the bottom of the barrel people same thing or too expensive. So for us if but then again, it's kind of sort of the is there a perfect linear way for this? No, I Can't pick, like, I can't just wave my hand and trust me, we will we market to everybody, super high end people lower middle class, whatever
you got to I mean, you got to understand human psychology as well. Right? And I know, I know you become a student of human psychology, right. It's it's not it's not a straight line, you know. Now what one thing I would say for our listeners is, Lance, I've always been, I think tracking is important, even for startups, like when they're first starting out, you don't need to have the full range of KPIs. Yeah, but I imagine you guys did have your pulse on your pipeline. Imagine you guys did have some numbers that targets you're trying to hit instead of just getting out there and being crazy psychos in the in the marketplace. Yeah, definitely,
we had QuickBooks in place, I will say that we had a system for invoicing, we had a system for receiving. And that's probably the bait, the both easiest quickest way you can start, it doesn't matter. Maybe FreshBooks is the same thing. Whatever kind of online software for us, it was QuickBooks. and QuickBooks does a really good job of it, like it'll help you try to predict your cash flow. The metrics are right there, you can have the I have the mobile app, and I'm looking at the mobile app probably once a day, honestly, even if it's after work, or you know, at a stoplight or something like that, and just seeing where we're at with billables. If there's overdue invoices and that kind of thing. And then you're tracking your cash flow in that way. So for sure, at a very basic level, we we've tracked from pretty much day one, and then you start to layer in the extra stuff like you're talking about. And then eventually you start talking about kind of what you and I were talking about before we started recording about buying other businesses growing in that kind of way. And then you start then there's other acronyms you get thrown out like EBITA, right earnings before income taxes, and I forget what amortization or something, which helps. It's what that's only one metric of valuing a business. And then there's another one from the H O K book, where it was like, Oh, how do you value? How do you figure out the value of each share you have in your company. And that's a metric for it, right? And then then who's ever buying it could have a totally different metric where they're factoring in, let's say, you're trying to buy a firm that has a ton of government work. And they have contracts for like, five years. That's a different equation to that's layered into it, for sure. So I feel like it's just never I love to actually love but it never stops. That's one of the few things I think I'm okay with, like continually learning on I am sick of taking like tests, no more architecture tests, no more contractor tests, but I'm happy to kind of learn on my own in that, with the ever growing like acronyms that come up, I want
to I want to point out something for our listeners here that if they're listening closely to what you're saying, there's there's something very cool here. That's that's very apparent, which is, I'm just gonna put this out here and see how it lands for you, Lance. Lance is not an architect doing business. Lance is a businessman. Now, he may be an architect as well. But obviously, he's also a businessman. So, you know, architects so to all architects listening today, there's, there's something, there's something critical that needs to happen, there's a switch that needs to happen in your brain, to begin to get out of the constant overwhelm, to get out of the hamster wheel to start to get yourself. Now, there's always going to be a bit of grind, but there can be balanced in the business there can be taken times off to go to the ballgames or can be earning awesome amounts of money. But it's going to be very difficult if you see yourself as an architect doing business, because an architect doing business when he's driving around, he's not thinking about the the lunch meetings, he needs to set up to do business development. He's not thinking about he's not pulling up his phone and looking at the app to see QuickBooks and see where are we at with our numbers. So it's different. There's a very, there's a very important distinction here of being something versus doing something. And like I saw this play out recently when I started jujitsu. So I started jiu jitsu about a year ago, when I first started doing it, I was like, I was a guy trying to just shoot it. So I was sitting there, I was like, getting getting choked out and just feeling awkward and not knowing the moves. Now, when I go, I'm not thinking about what I'm doing anymore. It's just natural, I get on the mat, I know where to grab your collar, I know if I'm going to go down and pull you to the mat, maybe you're going to pull me to the mat, maybe you're going to try to yank me down but I kind of know and I know how to modify myself because I'm now I'm being that thing. It's like it's it's ingrained in my habits. And when you finally get if you're always trying to hold on to your identity as an architect and saying, I don't want to be a business person, I don't want to be a business person. For my experience, it's going to be a very, very long, painful
tweak. You know, what tweak I like to add to that. Yeah, so completely resonates obviously, with the Tweak. I'd like to add to that for any architects who, like I'm with you. I get off on design all the time. Trust me. I've I love. I am especially now since I went back into teaching at North Dakota State. And then in my second semester up there, teaching juniors and seniors architectural design, it's it's 100% reinvigorated in me the fire and the passion for like beautiful architecture and I mean like the best right? So I found myself in the last month or so last couple months. Just nerding out on and buying way too many architecture books like like big fat ones, like the $350 set of Norman Foster, stuff like that. But looking at what and watching as many documentaries as I can find, as Amazon Prime and stuff like that, I'm with you guys. The highest high design stuff, trust me, I love it. I'm sitting in the building I designed to built and for myself and Alex and all that, and it's postmodern. And one of the most modern buildings in the town we operate in and everybody, all of our potential clients and people that walk into it, they're just, they love it, they want something similar, you know, all that good stuff. And design a built two of my own houses. And they're both award winning, have won multiple international architecture awards and stuff like that. I was watching the Philip Johnson documentary the other day. And he has a in Connecticut and he's got this big estate, right. And one of the things he said on that, in that documentary was he says, he goes the best clients, the best clients? Or is is you like you're the best client? The architect, right. And I loved how that gives us a that's a very Ivory Tower, sort of. Yes. Okay, general public clients, you're not, you're not actually the best client, if I could ever design a build for myself. And I know that for a fact, he totally resonated with me. And it was it because I was like, Yeah, I am the best client for myself, like, Duh, like I was. So it was obvious, like designing my own house, designing my own building, I could make quick decisions. I was still conscious of the budget and that sort of thing. Or I was okay with like spending a little bit more money on and trusting myself or trusting owl, and knowing that like, no, no, we're not skimping on, you know, you can see behind me here, like the light coming through in that big glass garage door, like we're not putting up an opaque one, we'll spend the extra five grand it takes to do it, like it's a big deal. It's gonna make a big deal and pay off in the long run with showcasing the building and everything. What I'm getting at is, if you can be a business person first, and the architect and the architect second and embodied in that, well then just make enough money and crush it. business wise, so you can commission your own work like Philip Johnson did. And all of these architects who do that like that is I mean, then there's like Norman Foster his his penthouse and his studio right up and living on the riverfront there. Like, that's a beautiful, beautiful building. And he, it's even the spaces laid out, like if you go look at the floor plans, the way he thinks about space, so clearly about the public side and the private side, and the private side also being connected with a mechanical all that I'm like, well, it was it was so good, because he didn't even have it was no committee, it was just him designing it for himself. So you can do you can do both of those things. You can be a great business person who would make it 30% profit, putting money away. And leapfrog yourself into the kind of work that gets your design goat. Maybe Maybe it is as simple as starting with your house starting with an adu in the back of your property. And then eventually taking a leap like we did where you buy land and become an actual real estate developer Jonathan Seagal San Diego perfect example. Perfect. That's probably the actually the best contemporary example of getting to design gold. He's a fellow in the AIA, super famous, super wealthy buys all these awesome cars. He's He's killer.
He's crushing it. He's like, architectural playboy. We
just yeah, yes, dude. It's gotten his cigar.
Yeah. He's great. He's great. Yeah. Hey, with the remaining minutes here, Lance I want to talk about and I'm going to define this power, right power. I want to talk about power. I'm not, but I'm going to define what power means. So I'm telling a quick story. So yesterday, I was hanging out with my son. My son is 16 years old right now. And he came home from school, and we have us homeschool, but he's at like this charter school where it goes some days it goes to a campus with other kids. Other days. He's at home doing his work on his own. And he comes home from school years, and he's just so excited. Like, I've never seen him. He's kind of an introverted kind of quiet kid. He's always kind of gloomy. He's like, kind of has a chip on his shoulder, about the world. That kind of energy, you know, anyways, he comes home. He's like effervescent, he's joyful. He's happy. He's, he's like engaging with me in conversation. And I'm just like, this energy is just, like, exuding off of him. And I'm like, wow. And he said, Dad, let me tell you what happened at school today. I'm like, what happened at school today? And he said that, that he asked this girl to the dance, and she said, Yes. Right, this really cute girl that he likes. And he's like, all excited about it. And so I took them out. We had some we had I call it bro excursion or a maskers. And I took them out on a man's version, which is like me and my son connecting, we kind of talked about it. And I pointed out to him, I said, Hey, Zion is his name. I said, Simon, how do you feel right now? Like, how do you like inside feels? Oh, I'm really happy. And I said, you notice when you feel that way that you feel you're more inclined to do things, you're more inclined to be more confident, you're more inclined to take risks that you wouldn't take, you're more inclined to engage people in conversation. You're more you're just more powerful. In other words, it's like yeah, I did notice that. You know, I noticed that even when I was doing my homework, I was like, more excited to get through it and everything. I said, That's right. That's power. Right. So maintaining ourselves giving ourselves a sense of power. In life. When we're excited about something we feel like we're on fire. We feel Like we're indomitable, we have confidence we can do stuff. It turns into results. So with that preface question, I have freelances. You know, in those early days and even now you say you're still grinding but like, what do you what do you use to to charge up your power? How do you stay in power? Because we all have days when we wake up, or maybe you don't. But I have days when I wake up Lancer, I'm just like, I'm like, oh, fuck another day. I'm like, do I need to do this? You know, okay, let's get out of bed. You know, other days that jump up. So how do you keep yourself really powered up for you? You have routines? Is it is it just think about the pain of the past? You have some stories about where you just nailed up and who you are now? Yeah,
yeah, that's exactly I'd say number one. It's the pain of the past for sure. Yeah. It's the Michael Jordan chip effect. Right? Like, I just love that. I love that. I just love that story so much when and if people don't know what that is, the short story is, he didn't make the he didn't make the varsity team, I think after his sophomore year, and then that summer, then just grinded, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind? It's all he did his basketball. And then he made the starting team, his junior year. And if he wouldn't, you got to wonder like, oh, would he? I mean, it's hard. It's almost inarguable. Would he have put in the time and the effort? If we didn't have that chip on his shoulder? And I don't think he would have we would imagine us not having Michael Jordan. Oh, man,
the world would be dude, I grew up in the 80s. Man, the Wheaties or you can, I mean, at the Air Jordans? I mean, the world would be seriously. I mean, usually,
it's, you could argue you could argue we wouldn't even have Yeezys today, we wouldn't have like yays Kanye West. Yeah, whole apparel. I mean, the influence is just so
amazing. That small, that small little friction point that he had of someone telling him he wasn't good enough, he was never gonna make it. I heard someone told me just yesterday, actually. But we're talking about the same thing. Someone told Ronaldo, the famous soccer player, that soccer would never feed him. Yeah,
that's insane. And so. So it's a double edged sword. Right? Because like, and I don't know, I feel like that's a it's definitely a masculine sort of thing. Because like our egos, you know, you hear the old trope about like, a man's ego is fragile, right? And there's a, the truth to it is is like, Yeah, especially if you got for me got laid off, like, what drove me was in two different ways. So like in college, what drove me to compete in college and then graduated the top of the class. So I had that kind of portfolio at the end, where I could basically seal my deal to be free in the sense of getting seven interviews in Colorado and moving out of North Dakota, I still love North Dakota, but like, for me, I was like, that's where I want to live. It's where, and it's, it's frankly, it's where I could practice like really good architecture. But North Dakota doesn't have those kinds of opportunities, right. And the chip from there was, I was going to school with a bunch of these other kids who had much better education than me and in high school and everything. Because they went too big. They had more opportunities. They weren't they were like from Minneapolis and stuff. And I was from a town of 500 people and graduate of 19. No opportunities whatsoever. So I just had a huge chip on my shoulder in that kind of way. And then there was like, there was parents along the way to where like, at psycho kids not gonna amount to anything like he's just a troublemaker, because that was a rebel. I still am. And I was like, yeah, yeah, no, I want to show you guys, right. And then the other one is when I moved to Boulder, and got laid off after being there for night, you know, at that first firm for nine months. And I was so mad because I knew they had no business prowess about them whatsoever. None, none. And then matter of fact, like that that original firm is they even broke up and split up, it was even further proof. So I'm like, Oh my gosh, like, I'm very thankful that they took a chance on me and I was, it helped me get here, and all of that. But at the same time, I can still, you know, be pissed about it, and have that chip on my shoulder. And that is still what drives me today. With f9 100%. As a matter of fact, I just posted you talked about social media, I just posted on my private Facebook, because I don't really do anything public there anymore. And you're my friend and you see the posts. And I just posted I go like we back we just we just are a finalist for the back of for the best of my Ohio Award, which is the best in customer service. There was like 15 architecture firms, top ones in the state nominated now we're down to three and one god willing will win again. But the But the caveat I added to that as I go the most hilarious part about it is like the ads, it's that I beat the guy who laid me off. I beat I beat that firm in into the finalist, Vic just this year and I'm going like this is sick. And then you know and then we talk about all the all the money reported in our website and marketing lately. And I Google it once a day, you know, like Colorado or luxury architect or residential architect or something, right? They're neck and neck with that guy still. Like for the first time. We're right there. So it's like you just Gotta be in luck. I'm going to be guilty of it. Just by proxy. Be careful about who you pissed off, because some of us, some of us are still burned. And now we'll never stop in that kind of way. Right crush you. I want. So like, Franklin, right? You know, he would always put himself in these really bad financial positions. And I almost wonder if it was on purpose. Yeah. And so that is
least subconsciously for sure, though. You
think it was almost like self sabotage? Absolutely. That way. I agree. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's huge. I remember my best work at school in terms of like, writing papers was like, when I was under the gun, when I was under the pressure when I had to whip out like a research paper and essay, and like, overnight, stay up all night long. And it'd be like, Damn, it was done. It was pretty damn good, too. But it's like, and a lot of architects find this to like, the creative pressure, there's something about needing to have a deadline, when it's just like, Okay, we got to buckle down, we got to make this thing flow crazy. But yeah, powerful. So. So what I want to leave with our listeners today is just like, you know, if you haven't had a really painful experience, consider that might be a handicap for you. And then, but also with a word of hope, like, what can you do in your life to build a manufacturer, some drive to manufacture some desire to manufacture? Because we can, right, there's things we can do every single morning, I have a morning routine to get myself in power every single day. And it's worked out marvelously, you know. And the other thing is, pain is simply a perspective. So pain is a perspective compared to a pleasure. Right? So what Lance experiences pain, when he got laid off was compared to the pleasure of actually having a steady job. And being an architect, I went through the same process myself. So the other way that I'm going to offer to our listeners that you can get some, some additional driving motivation, some power in your life, is by shifting your perspective, shifting your perspective. So just as a quick note on that when I was a kid, I had a bit of chip on my shoulder, I was kind of an angry kid, my mom was kind of controlling. And so she sent me to a psychiatrist, and I thought it was all broken. I'm like, oh, man, I'm just going to a psychiatrist, and a mom emotional problems and issues. I met with him for about six months. And he's like, You know what, I think it'd be really good for you, Nick is free to join my boys group. I'm like, okay, cool. So I joined his boys group, and in the boys group, I discovered that these kids didn't have fathers, their mothers would come home, drunk or high. You know, sometimes they would be out all night, because they're on the street. And that, that, that, um, that turned me around right away, I went back to my home. And I was like, the most grateful kid ever. Because I'm like, wait a second, I have this amazing family, I have a roof over my head, I have a bed. So there's an element here of giving yourself the perspective that can really drive and increase our performance and give us power. And that can that's what can help you do the grind. But don't let the grind overtake you. Because there are, it's easy to let our relationships and other parts of our life suffer, including our fitness, relationship with ourselves with the higher power when we're just focused on work. So there's this beautiful marrying that needs to happen that we all have to walk, which is the grind plus the tools, the frameworks, the systems. And the good news is, there's answers out there we live in the most prosperous time ever. And I want to thank Lance for coming on the show today. Lance Thank you. And congratulations for the way you guys are crushing it man me being award again, those awards amazing, awesome recognition for you for your team. And especially for just being open and sharing your journey because like, as you were talking about do your first project. I was like, I was like a chicken coop. You could start with a chicken coop.
Yeah, I'll design one.
You go back to one of the first episodes as you guys I remember back in the day is like I'm gonna design this chicken coop.
It was awesome. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me on. It's always a pleasure. And
that's a wrap. Oh, yeah, one more thing. If you haven't already, head on over to iTunes and leave a review, we'd love to read your name out here on the show. If you've been frustrated that you can't find the product data that you're looking for, you might be using the wrong search engine. broad searches result in consumer products out of date information and websites that oftentimes may hide or not have the information that you need at your fingertips. If you need specifications, CAD, BIM, etc. are cat.com Is your search engine, find and download the up to date product data you need fast our cat.com is free requires no registration. So go ahead, try it today. That's our cat Arca t.com. The views expressed on the show by my guests do not represent those of the hosts and I make no representation, promise guarantee pledge warranty, contract, bond or commitment except to help you conquer the world. Carpe Diem
