EP228: From garage to multiple locations: Lance Cayko's Journey Building F9 Productions

Thanks for having me, Brad. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, yeah. We're about a we're a 15 year old company at this point. And when I first we started out of a garage slash my business partner's apartment, which is kitty corner up to me, we both got laid off during the Great Recession. He came from New York, a big prominent firm laid him off. I was in Boulder, got laid off there. And we started our we started our firm with with nothing. I mean, we had hardly any cash. We had no built work, and that's where the name F9 Productions actually comes from. All we had was architectural renderings, the photorealistic ones. So the F9 key on the keyboard for the software we were using at the time made all the F9 productions. And that's how we had to convince clients to trust us with hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars in their building projects in order to do that. We starved for the first three or four years. Finally, we started to pull out of the recession in Colorado. And it's been a steady grind growth pattern for the last 15. And now we're up to 10 architects, interior designers, construction managers, that type of staff. And we started our first design build project was a tiny house, actually, in 2013. We were on HUTB for a couple of weeks, every other week. And we won an international architecture award for it. And that kind of set the tone for us going, hey, what about design, build, then eventually develop? Built a second set of tiny homes for Subaru after they saw us on HGTV. Made enough cash to finally buy a piece of land. I'm sitting in our development right now. Our office that we designed, built, and developed. It was a sixplex and a triplex. And then after that, we went full-fledged design plus build. And it's been an awesome ride.

It's actually a builder. Well, carpenter. I mean, I started in 42. So I've been... Swinging a hammer for 29 years on and off. When I was 13, I grew up in northwest North Dakota between a cattle ranch and a sugar beet farm. And I tried I tried working with my dad for one week. Didn't work. Yeah, exactly. You probably get it. I mean, we were both pretty stubborn and I just didn't really like that kind of work, even though now I literally am like I just got done gardening. Like I have a huge nonprofit community garden. I still farm and stuff like that. But. Didn't like it. And so what I did is I quit and I said, hey, I'm going to go just call your best friend, Bruce. He's the general contractor. I want to like try building. I'd always been like a Lego kid, a drawing kid, just really interested in like tactile building stuff. My grandpa was a carpenter and a builder, and I kind of wanted to see what that legacy was like. So I called him up that night and Bruce, I said, hey, I'll do whatever, you know, like, can I just have a job? And he goes, yeah, I'll pay $7.25 an hour. You'd be my gopher. I was like, oh, cool. What's a gopher? He's like, oh, you're going to go for this. Go for that. When you're done going for the things, then you can get up on the roof with the big boys and learn how to roof. I was so intent on like, I want to learn how to roof. I want a skill. That was the best gopher I ever had. And about halfway through the summer, Bruce pulled me aside and he goes, how much do you think I'm paying you? How much do you think I'm charging the owners for every hour of your labor? You know,725. He laughed and I was embarrassed. And then he, Bruce is the first entrepreneur that I ever experienced in my life. He explained how service-based businesses work. that there's a two to three X factor of, of labor that, you know, you charge. And I go, isn't that stealing? And he goes, is that seems immoral. And he goes, no, no, no, no, no. There's profit. There's overhead. There's risk. This is how it works. This is, this is how you maintain a sustainable service-based business in the construction industry. And I also, at that point, like under, like I had this lens of, wow, Bruce doesn't have an anxiety about money. My dad does. I had the rich dad, poor dad experience before I even read the book. And I was like, the end of the summer, you know, we were done. We did 80 roofs. It was amazing. And the end of the summer, he pulls me aside one more time and he goes, what do you want to be? I go, I want to be you. How do I become you? I was just so sold on being Bruce, his general contractor builder. And he goes, next year, you don't work for me. I was like, what? And he goes, yeah, you got to go learn framing. And then next summer after that, you should go learn foundations. And then after that, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He goes, that's how you become a general contractor. You need to get your hands dirty in all of the different trades so you can speak their language. You can understand how the processes work, what happens before the other one, critical paths, all of that. So I did from 13 to 21. Then I went and tried to work a different trade every single summer. I went to tech school for two years in Wahpeton. I had no intention of being an architect right away. It was like builder first. But then we got to our capstone. in the tech school for building construction tech. And the word architect finally came into my brain because we were building a house as our capstone. And I went, huh, if I became an architect at Next, I suddenly love school. If I became an architect, then I could fold those into building clients. This is like a 20-year-old kid having a light bulb of entrepreneurship going off in his head. I wish my son would do it. I'm like, ah. So I applied to North Dakota State. Went to architecture school for five years. And then one more word popped up during that time. And it was developer. And I went, oh, goodness. Like, I never even, you know, growing up in a town of 500 people, Northwest North Dakota, like, this is not, these are not people you work with a lot. Developers, architects, builders a little bit, right? Obviously. When that developer light bulb went off, that one really stuck with me. And that kind of then to recap, you know, F9 and what our trajectory to where we became design build. and then develop, and now design plus build is kind of a full circle.

Yeah, he did drafting like you in high school. Managed at least good enough grades to get an architecture school. So similar story. But he did also go, he's a National Guard guy. So he's a veteran technically. But yes, he's an architect. He and I graduated. We became best. We actually hated each other in college. Second year of college. What I noticed about him is like, I was less like intrigued by this guy. Because he was, everybody loved him. But not like girls were like flocking at him to date him. It was just a friend. All the guys, like everybody just love this guy. And I was like, what does he have that I don't have? And then he on the opposite, he would look at me and he'd be like, I would have all these girls to date. And I was pretty good at that. And he was like, what does he have that I don't have? And I was hockey in my own regard. He was also pretty arrogant in his own. And we just, we thought like, no, there's no way. Well, second semester of studio, I, we both like felt the urge and the challenge to sit right across from each other. And we did. And all of a sudden it became like, no, this guy's not so bad. This guy's not so bad. Huh? Maybe we should work together. So then the next year we did our first design project together after we saw each other leading other teams and totally having trouble with other teams. Then we, then we, did a project together, won a skyscraper competition, and then became best friends just because we were like, oh, you're the yin to my yang. Like I'm the engineer. You're the big lofty idea guy. You're the good cop. I'm the bad cop. And then we graduated number one, number two. We like to joke in some ways that I'm number one, he's number two at the top of our class. We had no intention to start in the firm for like 10 years. But push came to shove. And it was like he got laid off before me. He went back to construction management in North Dakota State thinking, I'm going to get another master's degree. This recession is one year. We didn't know any better. We're just young guys. We had no idea. Nobody did actually for that great recession. It was literally the great recession. And so he finishes, has to go live, can't get a job. Economy is still in the dumps. I get laid off when he graduates for that second degree. But I had been. Really working my butt off behind the scenes, trying to line up a bunch of CAD work to keep myself and my family going. I had two children at the time, just had a newborn. So when I got laid off, it was like super devastating from just a masculine kind of standpoint of like being a provider, a protector. So I managed to get a bunch of CAD work. kind of remote stuff that I worked for doing a bunch of modeling stuff. It was sort of architectural and everything. Then I got a house and I got a clinic, actually brought the clinic back to the architects that have laid me off, which was kind of hilarious and ironic. And then I, Al's calls me one day and he goes, I just hate my life. Like I've been living with my mom and dad for three or four months. I got to get out of here. Uh, and I go, well, how much cash you got? And he's like, Oh, I got like four or five grand. I go, that's enough. I got, I think I've got a pipeline for work. I think I've figured it out how to do this. We're not, we're not even licensed yet, but we'll figure, we'll figure out how to get licensed. There's a lot of stuff we can do unlicensed, like single family homes, and we can work for other architects and do renderings and stuff like that. So he came down and like I said, we struggled for about three or four years, barely made payroll. We paid ourselves like the bare minimum to just live. And then we got licensed and. One of the things that we tried to do is just be the opposite of these other architects. And that just paid off dividends like crazy. I mean, some of our first clients just told us, we go, well, why did you pick us over this very established firm? They go, you guys picked up the phone. You guys gave a crap. You guys listened, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's totally nuts. I think it's bonkers because like we started, we expanded on the idea of F9 probably 10 years ago after we got a good rhythm going in business. And the way we expanded on it was we said, well, let's just make these into nine principles. And number four is communicate. We have a rule at our both offices, Longmont in Denver and then with the construction team and interiors, everybody is. If a client, if a client consultant, somebody professionally we're working with emails us, Texas calls us, you have to get back to them within one hour. It's a real lofty goal. Does it slip into maybe a full workday? Sure. But the North Star is one hour. And even if it's just, hey, I see your email. I don't have the time to get back to you in detail, but I am processing it. I will help answer your question or whatever tomorrow. has been giant. That has been the biggest thing. It's been so much bigger than you guys. I'm hiring you guys to do a really cool house, a really cool office building, anything like that. They already, I'm convinced the general public already understands like architects are going to push design. They are going to do cool stuff. Or if they're looking at me from a builder, this builder is going from a builder perspective, they're going to, I'm hiring Lance to build my building because he has the right subs. He's going to get it done. We're going to be under budget, on time, all that good stuff. It's the communication that just takes it up to another level where people are like, we've had a client recently. It was a super small project. You're talking like a couple thousand dollars in fees. It's like a little addition to the back of a garage and between a mudroom and stuff. Nothing fancy. And she goes, you know, I was a little hesitant to reach out to you guys because you guys look like a big design build firm. But the way you took care of me made me feel like it was just your number one client. And I go, well, you are. I mean, that's the idea is to try to make everybody feel like there's a red carpet for them at all times with our company. And that's been the hugest thing.

Yeah. You know, we read a book. We read one book each year or two with a company. It's mandatory. It's not too, you know, crazy of time and everything. And people usually enjoy it because it's a lot of like self-improvement books. So one of the ones we read on the communication lines is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Yeah. Huge. Like, I can't really. Put a number on how many times a week or a day staff will be saying. It's probably in the dozens where they're going. I'm just seeking to understand. That's one of the principles. I'm seeking to understand whether it's through you're trying to seeking to understand what a client is looking for, what a consultant is looking for, what the city is looking for. Just trying to understand before you make a judgment call on something goes such a huge way because, I mean, I've gotten tangled with. A recent new subcontractor, I won't even say what trade it is, tried him out for the first time. And I'm actually going to send him the book. And when we're done with the project and go, I think you guys, look, I'm not trying to give you guys unsolicited advice like a jerk. I just think you guys do a great job in the field, but you guys could be a cream of the crop if you just picked it up in the office and did more seeking to understand rather than just accusing, for instance, like, well, the plumbers need to. have a fire under their butt. It's like they do. That's not even the problem of why they're behind. If you guys would have seeked to understand why they're behind, then you wouldn't understand. where, where we're at, we wouldn't have gotten to this heated argument. And maybe I would be more inclined to work with you guys in the future type of things. So it's huge. It's huge. And there's just all of those methodologies behind the communication that I think are key to figure out.

gosh,100%. I love that you brought up the EQ and the IQ and then sort of sandwich it with just being an average, just being average. It's like average works. Average gets the job done. Average passes code. Average passes inspection. Um, average speed will be acceptable on many, many jobs, whether it's design or build or whatever, whatever you're doing, any kind of service-based stuff. And that, this is the thing they'd actually don't teach in college or trade school, or just, I think almost anywhere. And that's where I think it's like our job, Brad, too. And why I try to guest on shows like yours or have you or have people like you on my show. This is where it actually, I think, is sort of the breakthrough is happening in our industry, whether it's architecture, engineering, or construction, that whole AEC triangle, is I'm seeing people open up a lot more and start talking about this stuff and like, this is what matters. And you're right, with the ego, it's really interesting, especially it's a male-dominated industry. That's one of the reasons why I love it, because I'm like, it's still one of the sanctuaries for males to be males. and succeed and excel and all of that. But the problem with it is, and I recognize this, is like there's a lot of fragile egos. There's a lot of imposter syndrome, right? Where it's like, I don't know how many times I've wanted to, I've had to tell why I'm experiencing this specific thing. Recently in the last three months has just blown my mind. I'm like, there's another book I read that was really good. I had an author on my podcast. The book is called Hold the Calm. And because I've been accused of being like a hothead sometimes. I think everybody has a fuse at some point. Right. And so I read the book and I went, one of the biggest things I've learned from it is like my dad did this to me all the time growing up. And one of my best friends used to as well. I still think about him once a month about this because it bugs me. It irks me. Is he goes, he's like, calm down. When has that ever worked? When has that ever worked to tell anybody? Right. I mean, I see. I saw you. You're married. You know, I have a wife. It's like, oh, it works great

Yeah. Right. I mean, that's the perfect litmus test. Girlfriend, wife, whatever. Go tell them to calm down. Does it work? No. Well, why do you think that's going to work in the professional world? Right. And so that like that book gives you a bigger, higher EQ to help deescalate situations because it will. There's no doubt. On any construction project, there is going to be a crescendo of emotion at some point where whether it's you as the GC and the owner, maybe it's you, the owner, and a sub, or you and a couple subs, in a meeting, on site, trying to solve a problem, finger pointing, emotions, it just says it's going to happen. Whether it's like a hot day causing it, you know what I mean? Just goofiness. People are having problems at home, whatever. Figuring out how to not tell people to calm down and figuring out how to get them to calm down without telling them that because it never works is like a superpower. That's where it's like spreading the message like this. I think that's just, I just want to do it because I want a better industry.

We get accused a lot. rightly so by people of going, I had a client tell me the other day, we were only their architect, but I asked them if they were going to use this builder again on this new big addition we're going to do on their house. It's one of our most famous houses. It's been a dwell magazines. Amazing. And he's one of my friends now at this point is owner. And I go, are you going to use, you know, X, are you going to use X, Y, and Z again? And he goes, Oh yeah. I go, well, I thought you guys had a big blow up. And he goes, yeah, but like five, six years away from when we finished the project, I'm realizing. Your industry is a shit show. And I'm and he goes, you general contractors are used car salesmen. He goes, I don't mean that with disrespect. He goes, you guys have to sell the most difficult thing that I'm ever going to do in my life, which is build a building. And that you can't tell us that every all the things that are possibly going to go wrong. Otherwise, we'd never build anything. So you're sort of having to be a used car salesman about it. And I just want this industry to get better. That's the big, and there's so much human capital involved in our industry, and there's so many different moving parts physically and with the people. And it's one of the last things we make in America. Like, I don't want it to go away. I actually don't want the automation to happen. I don't think it ever will in a certain regard. You know, you're not going to send a robot in to fix an existing building, I don't think.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's, those are kind of my. lengthy thoughts.

It's a superpower when you, the screaming specifically, I don't have a superintendent anymore. We refocused the way we have our construction company. But when I did, and I was teaching him, there was multiple times where the owner would scream at me and then we'd, we'd be done with the meeting and he would go, are you okay? And I'm like, I didn't lose. Like, it's not that I won, but like that person definitely lost and they got it out of their system and everything's going to be fine tomorrow and we solved the problem. But they just had to get that out of their system. And that's why it's a superpower and holding the calm is like, if you can do that, you're always the adult in the room and everybody sees it. Like there's been plenty of times where it's a husband and wife duo and the husband loses his mind, screaming, yelling. And the wife's like, I'm so sorry. And she knows. Yeah. He's the one. Right. And I know that like, yeah, as long as I went over the wife, like, did I lose? No, I won over the wife. That's what matters because they spend the most money anyway. This is statistically true, you know? Right. So, yeah.

It's insane. People don't want to leadership in is a privilege that I do think is is earned. And you have to keep earning it as you go as you start to be more of a leader with people. And the general contractor is sort of the ultimate leader, especially if you're leading men, men with egos like we keep talking, we keep talking about. And I don't believe that. My dad was a yeller and I've tried to my whole life to not be that guy and be a yeller. And I've had I had other many other like father figure examples from my buddies, one of which is like my business partner. And I noticed the guys who don't yell but are in leadership positions when they do end up getting upset. They don't even need to yell because you don't want to see them. upset in that kind of way. It's so out of their usual character. That sort of leadership style goes much, much further. Whether you're the owner, the builder, or a subcontractor or anything, and you're in that kind of role too, I don't think just because you're writing a check that it gives you license to mistreat people. Oh, absolutely. You're right. You have this big responsibility as somebody who, if you employ other people, especially if you're the owner, right? Because if the owner thinks just because they're writing the check that they have a license to mistreat people, then I would ask them, and I have asked owners to their faces, I go like, so do you go into a restaurant and mistreat the waitstaff because you're writing the check? It's like the most obvious example you could give somebody. And it's like, no, that's not how you do it. Leadership is a craft in itself.

Yeah. A hundred percent. And it's not our fault, right? Cause that's where it's our primary focus. Initially. I told him totally with you. We get the whole critical path. We understand, especially if you're GC, then you understand like what comes, what comes first, what comes next, what comes after that, who do I need to make sure they're there that day? Even if it's just as simple as like, oh, the cleaner has to show up today or the flooring guys are going to be so pissed tomorrow because I can't, sanding and getting everything going literally on this other, you know, job site. Like everybody's critical in their own regard. So yeah, you just gotta, that's why I'm thankful for shows like this, other shows, people finally speaking up about it. I don't know if we've ever had that happen before. Podcasting really came out. I mean, it's really huge in that regard. Sure, there's books, but. No, I mean, as a half blue collar guy, I would rather listen and watch, right? Because we're so physical than sit down with a book. It's just usually not our kind of our thing. And I think, you know, it's really been a huge thing for men.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I mean, that's a that's real. That's like super flattering for you to say that, because, yes, I mean, Al and I that's why Al Al actually one of the primary reasons he decided to be an architect. He's also a builder, by the way. He's kind of like he's flattered me and said in like public speeches to people is like he's always looked to be sort of as this big brother figure. And then he just got it. He's got to do it, too. Right. So but his grandmother took him to Falling Water when he was a very young child. And then he was just kind of hooked on the whole thing. One of my mentors in college was a huge Frank Lloyd Wright fan, Daryl Booker. And I've been to both Taliesin West, Taliesin East. And I just liked Frank Lloyd Wright because he was such an American entrepreneur. He's like a hypomanic. This is one of the most recent books I've read is like the hypomanics is and I'm clearly one of them. And I wish I would do a segment on him. But the thing that we've always tried to really take from what he did as an architect and a builder, because he was also a builder. is that he was out there physically with, especially in Taliesin, West and East, he was out there with the architects insisting that they should build, which is, I think, too, it was like, go pick up a hammer as an architect, please, so that you can have empathy for the field. These men are risking their lives to build your beautiful buildings. Statistically, like it's one of the most dangerous professions out there. So yeah, the houses that we've done that are most indicative of that are probably the East Watch, West Watch, South Watch, North Watch series. And so the Eastwatch was our first one, and that's probably our most famous house that I was kind of talking about earlier. And we're not trying to dominate the mountains with those houses. Right. We're trying to actually integrate them with the landscape. And we've actually had to fight a lot of HOAs. Oh, yeah. In the area. Yeah, because they're like some of them are strangely worried about. The snow loads because they think it's a flat roof, but it's not. It's usually like a 112 pitch on those little roofs. And we go, don't worry. We're engineering it. We'll stamp it. It's our liability. We have E &O insurance. And then the builder's like, yeah, as long as the engineers sign off. And they're very robust roofs and all that. But they think these houses are dominant. And I'm going, do you guys understand the volume of attic space where we're moving from the landscape? by not doing these super high pitches. And as soon as we get them to understand that with like sort of a visual A-B test, they all sign off and they go, oh, yeah, you guys are blending with the landscape. This is Frank Lloyd Wright-esque architecture, very horizontal because we're horizontal beings. I mean, we see a horizon every single day, right? This is our perception in how we do it.

Well, we've already talked ad nauseum about not yelling. Well, yeah. And not being a yeller. So I had to give one more jab in there about that. What I've always tried to do with every employee is say, I'm not here to hold you back. I want you to bite off as much as you want to chew. If you want to, on the architecture side, accelerate and eventually be a principal and a co-owner, let's talk about how we get there. Because if you want more reward, I'm just going to give you more responsibility. If you're up to it, cool. Works for me. I think there's plenty of money to go around. I'm not here to be a protectionist, even with my own companies, to that extent where I'm like, you're never going to be where I'm at. It's like, no, why not? Hey, I get to fish and hunt and hike more. That would be fine for me. Right. I don't I'm not here to like squeeze every single penny out of everybody. Same thing on the contracting side is with with like our construction managers and people that do construction administration for us. It's how much do you want to where do you want to be? Do you want to keep accelerating? Then it's going to require X, Y and Z. And at the same time, though, the challenge is this with both of those is Alex and I, my business partner, we work, you know,50 hours. Maybe, maybe sometimes pushing 50,55 on our own time. Like I just had a, just got back from vacation with my wife and she knows the drill because I'm paying all the bills. It's like, I'm will, I get up at five. I worked to maybe eight by the time I'm done working. She's ready to go for the day. It didn't hurt anybody, but I'm a hypomanic. So that's how I. maintain this sort of lifestyle where it's the work and play. It's about 50,50. That's your challenge is like, how do you then create an efficient system and framework with your employees in your companies, in your company, in your contracting company to where you're not burning guys out and you're allowing them to only usually work maybe 40,45 hours a week. So they get their R &R. which is super important. This is a very stressful progression. It will burn guys out real quick if you don't figure that part out.

profitable, like

You got to learn how to say no. You got to learn how to go. I don't need every job. Maybe I do need to take some risks and raise the fees and get to the point where I go. It's okay if my success rate of winning jobs is only 30,40%, but I'm commanding higher fees and therefore getting higher salaries and better timelines.

No. First meeting is gratis. Yeah, I'm still that kind of mindset where I'm happy to just sit down for an hour or somebody. The craziest things have happened to me by even just, again, sort of picking up the phone and giving people some advice on the phone. There's so many people that don't know how the industry works that are trying to do something. They're trying to start a business. So they signed a letter of intent on a space that they're going to build out for a tenant finish. They are wanting to buy a piece of land and build a little house on it or something like that. Their landlord is telling them one thing or another. When I've picked up the phone and then answered and just talk them through how the process works, I've probably gotten at this point out of 150,135 five-star reviews that we have from both companies on Google. 10 of those, I think, are just me talking to people and them not even hiring me because I've given them a little bit of advice and saved them a ton of money. And they go like, hey, you can go look them up too. They're kind of funny to read some of them because they're like. I spoke with Lance. We didn't even hire him as an architect, but he gave me such good advice and saved me so much money. I had to leave him a five-star review, and I will work with him in the future when we do need an architect. And, like, that's kind of why I've always still been okay with first meetings free. That's okay.

Yeah. And we're architects first. That's the one thing, too, as I say. That's why we're not design slash build. We're design plus build. So a lot of people do come to us, though, especially this since we've been doing it, since we've been building for about seven years now, steady as licensed class B contractors and all of that is they will be all, hey, I love that you're going to provide a white blood service. Like, I don't want to have to interview three more contractors like they like our methodology because we are open. We are cost plus open book. Like that's sort of the catch is we're like, we're cost plus, it's not a fixed fee. It's a fixed percentage on all the subs and everything on top, you know, how we make our money. But it's a, it's a moving target, but you get to see all the bids. You get to, it's not close book. You're fully engaged with us looking at every, we can engage multiple subs and all of that. So they come to us and they go, and I go, but here's the deal is we're going to be your architect first. We need to get about halfway through that architecture process. and see if this is still a good fit for another two years. And I go, because it's going to be a year to build your project. Then we have to warranty it for another year. After that, this is a long-term thing if we're going to go the full design plus build. And then they have to meet a couple of other criteria. And here's where it's sort of like, I didn't realize this would happen until, you know, we started doing it. Like I didn't have this epiphany when I was 20, but it's like, man, I can be pretty picky about who I build for. You know, there's a likability part of it. And are we going to... Are we going to have the sort of temperaments we need for each other over those two to three years? Because there's going to be high points and low points, all that. They have to be within a 30 to 45 minute radius of my Northern Colorado office in Longmont. And then they got to be cash. And I don't mean that we're skirting the IRS. It's like, I don't want to deal with Wells Fargo. I like if you are some of our commercial developers, it's hard money. The draws are easy. It's self inspections. The homeowners who we're doing with these multimillion dollar homes for even just these little additions, again, not having to go through a bank. It's a streamlined process and those sort of things. So, yeah, in our architecture services are usually between five and 25 and 10 percent of a total construction budget contracting. We're those guys that are between 15 and 20 percent markups on everything. And we just people trust us to go there and they know that we're going to get it done for those kind of fees. There's a lot less change orders. It just works.

Yeah, I've tried, I've tried that recently on one and I'm just. Yeah, but it's only one sub, but it's still such a wrench. I'm like, I trusted you.

Yeah. You got to figure out how to identify the red flags right away. You got to become a Genesis 128 guy. That's what I am is to be fruitful and multiply. You know, like that's the mindset of abundance. This idea of scarcity. I don't know if you're an outdoorsman, Brad. I am. And it's like, I go look at the woods. all the time in Colorado. And I pointed out to my children, I'm like, do you see how many trees there are? Like, it's crazy. I'm not sure the people from New York city ever understand that nature is almost infinite. Like it probably is. I mean, it just seems like it's the abundance there. And then that's what brings me back to folding that into businesses. It's okay. You got to figure out how to say no to some people. It maybe doesn't happen right away. Like you said, Brad, you got to. But, but, and then when you don't do it right away, because you can't, because you have to, you have to eat. That's only going to make it tough. That's going to make you stronger. Like I would hope you learn some lessons from working with those difficult people that make you stronger, better, higher EQ, all that stuff.

Yeah, two ways. Go to F9Productions. com. You can fill out the contact form. You can sign up for our newsletter. We send a newsletter every week or every month that keeps you up to date on all of our latest and greatest and cool stuff. And then you can go to LinkedIn. com and you can type in L-A-N-C-E, last name Psycho, C-A-Y-K-O. I will link in with almost anybody. I post some real positive motivational stuff on there about every week. That's personal and professional. I just went on this huge, crazy hike with one of my best friends,15 miles,35,000 steps,4,000 feet of elevation gain, and tied it all back into how things make you stronger while you're looking forward.

Oh, well, now I got to give you two answers for that. So the first one that I recommend, especially every man who's listening to this needs to listen to Marcus Aurelius' meditations. It will 100% change your life because there it is. There it is. I love that. Yeah. I try to read it once a year at this point, like hiking, just like you. Like I'm a very much an auditory guy. And the other one I'm reading is, especially if you're an entrepreneur, it'll help you understand yourself better. or other entrepreneurs that you're working with is the hypomanic edge. I've never understood myself more or my wife has understood me at a hypomanic edge. It has these really cool stories about like some of the, our founding fathers, for example, like Alexander Hamilton, hypomanic. Yeah. Clearly. I mean, these, these, this is how these dudes work. Uh, so yeah.

John D. Gartner. Gartner, G-A-R-T-N-E-R. Awesome. Phenomenal book.

You're doing it right, brother.

Thanks for having me, Brad. Pleasure.