Beyond Boundaries: Elevating Your Podcast With Diversity Of Ideas With Lance Cayko Of Inside The Firm

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority Magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the Binge Factor.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard and I have Lance Caiko as our guest today here talking about Inside the Firm. I love that title. It has great implications. He's it's about his architectural firm, so it's definitely about a firm and it just has such nice insights and real authentic openness that makes it really unusual in the scope of all the other ones out there trying to get clients and do other things in his industry. So he's got real transparent there in a really wonderful way. So let me tell you a little bit about Lance. Lance Keiko is a multi talented serial entrepreneur, architect, builder, lecturer and podcaster and he has a diverse background in architecture, construction, real estate development and he's the co founder and partner of F9 Productions, a wildly successful design plus build firm in Longmont, Colorado. He specializes in single family residential, multifamily residential and small commercial projects. In addition to his work at F9, he has a family of six. His wife is pretty busy and an active member of his community and a respected industry leader. That's where this podcast comes in because he routinely lectures at the University of Boulder and he has a professional community in the architecture community. This podcast is a driver for more speaking events, other things that he might do in and around the industry. As the co host of Inside the Firm, he has a co host along with him, Alex Gore and Alex and he really do a lot of conversation together about the challenges and the things that they're facing. It's a really popular architectural business podcast and with insights and advice on not just architecture, but entrepreneurship and small business ownership in general. One of the things I think is sorely underestimated in the podcasting world is how a popular podcast, a really interesting and insightful podcast like Inside the Firm can actually lead you to not just better clients and more clients, but it can also lead you to better employees. Employees who want to stick around because of you being so transparent and talking about the business so openly. It's one of the things that we use here with our staff of over 80 at Potitize. Here I am talking on the binge factor. We talk on feed your brand and our, our staff is intimately involved in understanding what's driving things, what clients are thinking about, what we're thinking about. This is a high value to having a firm based or company based podcast of some kind. So I'm really excited that we can talk today. Plus I have a background where I just love architecture in general and love building and love furniture, which is where I come from. So Lance and I really bonded. So I'm sure you're going to enjoy this. Episod so let's hear it from Lance Caiko. Inside the Firm.

Lance, thanks for coming and talking Inside the Firm. I love that name because it's really, I mean it has that connotation to the firm and so. But it is so different. Like I didn't consider myself when I was running a design firm. I didn't consider it. I didn't really consider it an agency. I didn't consider it a big business. It just seemed like a different entity. A firm is much more accurate description.

Oh, I'm glad you agree. Yeah. Because I second guess myself sometimes. I think the name is catchy too and it rolls off the tongue really nicely. But it's like, yeah, what do you call an architecture firm? Do you call it an architecture firm? Do you call an architecture practice? They tell us in school and even my colleagues that I speak with and talk with all the time that are practice other practicing architects is, well, we're always practicing. It's kind of like doctor like you're practicing medicine, you're, you're literally just continually getting better. But yeah, the firm, the idea with it was, is, is in the name in itself. As we were talking about before we started going live here was we wanted to just bring people actually inside an architecture firm, whether they were people that have worked in owned firms for a long time or they were just starting a business or they were thinking about starting business or even college students. You actually have a lot of listeners that end up being like college students and we inspire in that way. And the overall arching point of it was twofold. Number one, to bring people in and give them an inside look. And because up until my generation and maybe Gen X, I'm sort of in between millennial and Gen X, the way architecture practices or design firms were run and how they work is felt like everybody had to hold everything very close to their chest. And that's just the opposite of what Alex and I have always thought about. Is like we believe in a world of abundance. One of my favorite Bible quotes is Genesis 1:28, Be fruitful and multiply. Like, I don't believe in this idea of scarcity. I think nature and we're from nature. There's plenty to go around for everybody. So what is it going to hurt if we're giving out not even trade secrets, but just how we're working. At the end of the day, I just want there to be better architects. I don't want there to be. I'm tired of contractors pitted against architects and vice versa. And I'm sure you're aware of that as somebody who was getting furniture fabricated in the field and the second part of it was the big goal of it was the Gen Z and millennial generations, I feel like, are very dejected in a lot of ways where there's this victimhood mentality. And like capitalism is all bad. And it's like, yes, there's big problems with capitalism, cronyism. Right. But the idea that the American dream is dead is I think, a falsity. And I really believe that. Like if there's any. I mean our story especially came from. We had no clients when we first started. We nothing. And we did it. We started in the middle of the Great Recession. If we can do it, surely other people can do it too. And we've gotten so much fan mail and just people contacting us for all kinds of amazing advice and just thanking us for laying it all bare and making it happen in that kind of way with the show.

And I think it's so necessary in the particular dynamics of it is so often people want to be a celebrity. Right. That's sort of our influencer celebrity model. That's what every CEO thinks they have to be nowadays. And in an architecture firm, I know it's. There's a lot of egos already. Design firm is same. Right. But if you can't collaborate, if you can't get over that and you can't start working together, you don't achieve the ultimate goal because it's a project, it's not a showcase.

Yeah, yeah. We have gotten, we have had listeners interact with us in almost every single way. We've actually gotten projects from other architects, even in the same state of Colorado where we are headquartered in that have referred us to clients, high profile clients, very well paying clients and without simply because maybe they couldn't take on that typology or it was too far for them or they were too busy. So the whole idea of holding it close to Your vest and getting no return for it is. I mean, we just turn it on its head in that, in that kind of way. People reach out to us and want to collaborate with us all the time. And you talk the celebrity part of it is really funny. I think I just got to make the point that it finally. My children were. Have been saying this for like several years. Like, I just want to be famous. I want to be famous. And I go, well, your dad's kind of famous. And they don't believe me. Right.

So you have to show them YouTube. So that's what broke through my nine year old. Oh. She said the other day, oh, mom, you are famous. You're on YouTube.

Okay.

That's what tips the scale at the age group.

Yeah, Good to know. So I can't remember what book I was reading. I think it was like hold the Calm or something like that. I don't know what it was. But they said they made the point in that when your children say these things, it's because they want to be seen. That's all it is. They don't really want to be famous. It's just that's their way of expressing that they want to be seen and heard and stuff like that. So for us, it was never about fame or anything like that. But I just love that you brought that point up.

Yeah, yeah. But I do think that that's the case is that we so often, especially in a consulting firm of any kind, is that we try to, we. We can't afford to lose a client to somebody else. And so you get very worried about having that. But there's this tipping point between publicity, making sure people know how you work and also combating. And I think that's what inside the firm does brilliantly. Especially the conversations that you and Alex have together and Alex Gore is your co host and the conversations that you have together. I think what it really does is it foremost this idea of I had a bad experience as a listener with an architect or whatever. This, you know, I don't think I can afford one. Or it starts to put out this conversation of I don't think I can afford not to have one. I don't think I can. I think, oh, my experience was isolated. That was an exception. And so it starts to. To help the industry overall, whether they're going to hire you or not. So they should all be really grateful for you guys putting the show out.

That's exactly what. Exactly. You nailed it. It's. I frankly, I just don't care if other people are mad at us for, you know, putting out that kind of stuff, because that's exactly what I want it to be. The other thing it's really done for us is actually been a way to keep us, hold us accountable. So if we will come up with strategies sometimes on the fly in that basically it's a Friday executive meeting that you're hearing every day on the show. And then it's like, okay, now we got to do that. Like we talked about it on air publicly. Now we have to implement, you know, whatever kind of strategy or new or improvement we're going to make in the firm. And then it's also us sharing ways where we were already doing stuff like that. We try to read a book every year as a firm as a whole, and then we meet about it. One of the last ones we read was the 2 second lean by Paul Aker. And it's completely transformed the way we operate our firm. Every single day somebody has to present a two second lean idea. They have a different improvement they're going to make and stuff like that. And now, and I hope, and then we explain to our listeners, like, look, here's how it improved us. Like, this is really working. You guys, you guys should do it too. It costs you nothing. The podcast is free. Just make it happen.

It's got. It costs time. But, you know, and I think that's the biggest part for most, whether it's, you know, a business owner of any kind. But the idea of doing a podcast, especially one that you do two days a week, where one is outreach and you're doing interview with, you know, company owners, business owners, entrepreneurs, CEOs all over the place. And you're started diving into them in their brain. And then you have your executive meeting conversation between the two of you. So that's a big commitment to taking time to do that each week. And without an immediate financial return on investment, a lot of people don't want to do it.

Yeah, of course they wouldn't. Yeah, it's a labor, you know, I just had a colleague come up to the office a few weeks ago. I went to school with him. He graduated a few years ahead of me and everything. And he wanted to check out the headquarters and everything. He was. Once I had him on the show, then he binged on the Monday morning shows. He was just like, they're so good. Like they're, they're perfect 30 minutes or a perfect commute time. And I just. The way you pick people's brains and everything, he's like, you're A pretty good interviewer. I was like, oh, thanks, right?

You've done 500. You've gotten good at it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's probably the third thing that it's done is in terms of public speaking, the improvement level that you get to, especially if you pay attention and you should listen to. You know, if you're going to start this, if you're going to start your own show, I think you should start. Listen to as many episodes does it take before you finally get comfortable with your voice and you recognize the us and the ums, and you really try to get rid of that and come up with better strategies for avoiding those sort of prepositions and everything like that. But Rhett. Anyway, back to Rhett, when he came up, he said, do you guys get paid for this? And I. He goes, it seems like it's just labor of love. And I go, yeah, we break even now, basically. We break even now. It pays for our time, actually pays rent. We rent to ourselves with our. Build one of our buildings that we own and stuff like that. And he was totally blown away that we got paid at all for it. So I'm with you. I mean, most podcasters, the majority, you probably would know more than me how much actually monetized versus not.

So when I was running my design firm and we ran our first podcast, the 3D print one called WTFF. So it's really old. We have 750 episodes, if any, or 650 episodes. Sorry, I almost added an extra one. Six hundred and fifty five episodes we did on that one before we stopped doing it. But when we were running our firm and doing that, the reality is it probably did easily 1.2 million in consulting for me within a year. So it was closing consulting jobs faster. So if I looked at it as. Did I get paid for the show? Well, I refused to take advertisers in the beginning. We eventually did, but we didn't in the beginning. And that. But I didn't need to because it was the consulting or the speed of closure that would happen. And I don't know about you, but in the furniture design world, it would take us six months to a year to close a client. Sometimes it just was a really long sales cycle of back and forth, refining things, getting quotes in place, deciding because then they were going to work with us for three years, so it wasn't going to be a short contract. And so that was kind of part of the model for it. And I could close them in three months. Quarter of the time, sometimes, yeah.

It does take us that long. Sometimes I joke to everybody, including, you know, loved ones, that it's an 18 hole course. Yeah, it's like golf. It's a very long game. You might meet somebody and it might take three to five years. I'm serious. There's cases I could probably dig up if I really, really looked that took that long from the point of just touching somebody in phone call, email, text, or listening to the show. And then eventually they ended up being clients. So it's a long game, but that's just part of the deal. I think it's just a matter of being stoic about the whole situation and like, what a great voice and a tool that you have now at your disposal at any time, even if you're frustrated. That's another probably an outlet that it's done for us is we don't name names on the show. Right. But so if we have a troublesome client or a troublesome consultant, or we've even talked about hiring and firing people without naming them and stuff like that, even just having that outlet for me personally has been very positive.

Well, it helps you think things through. I love that. And I think that's really the specialness of your show is. And the binge factor, as you know, look, your friend was pointing out that your binge factor is clearly how dialed in to this model of business you are. And the fact that you're willing to be open, raw, and have the hard conversations is going to make it a better business. So I want to listen to that because I'm going to learn something from your process. I'm going to learn something from the questions you ask. And that is really powerful because there are so few places. You pointed out earlier, you're the top five architectural podcasts. There aren't a lot of them. Like, this is like. But you are the top of that top because you've got over 500 episodes and that is very elite. So I think I did the statistics recently, and less than 2% of podcasts ever make it over 500 ever.

And of the active shows currently posting and doing that, it's 2% of 2%.

Oh, my gosh. Wow. You're making me feel special.

This is. What you've done is really special.

Yeah. And we honestly have no intention of stopping. I mean, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but, like, that's. There are times where I get a little. It's just a lot like you said. I mean, for me, with doing everything I do, architect, builder, podcaster, teacher, philanthropist, all the Things like just now I'm kind of narrowed down to, like, I have two slots I can do interviews on in addition to the Friday show. But it's so worth it. I mean, even just interviewing folks like some authors that I have on, every once in a while. There was a gal, and I need to start memorizing her name because they keep mentioning her. She just wrote this book. It's called holding the Calm. She got halfway through her interview with me, and I bought the book in real time on the show. And it was a game changer of a book in my life for sure. I just read it maybe five or five or six weeks ago. That's gotta be some level of, like, Providence, right? That all that happened.

Like, I love that when that happens. It's just. It's one of my favorite things about it is that, like, you know, you really do. You meet someone and it was just the thing you need right at that moment in time. And so, yeah, I just, I love that about that. I love that idea that you're asking for it by putting this out there as a podcast and the universe is delivering it to you right at the right moment in time. So, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Networking too, like you said. I'm glad you mentioned the networking part of it and how it led to your sales, too. That's another part of where I would say for us, the positives of the podcast have been networking and reaching out. And one of my goals next year is actually to get, like, for example, one of our favorite civil engineer. He's been. I think he's been on the show like two or three times now. He's extremely loyal to us. We're one of, like a very few handful of architects that he refers to other developers, and the referrals come back. So I think next year one of my goals is, like, I'm just going to cold call and reach out to as many of the prominent general contractors in the Denver metro area and say, hey, would love to feature on the show and see if I can get referrals back and forth. I feel like that's kind of where for me, it's probably headed next with the Monday morning shows.

Well, and I think it's not just the referral, but it's going to establish this deeper touchpoint relationship that you have, because it's great to have a network to have referrals in, but if that network doesn't really understand you, you don't understand them. It doesn't make those referrals as valu. And I think that's what the podcast tend for.

There's this. A loyalty that comes about with it. I mean, when you do some like, kind of. It's not like a favor, I guess, it's just there's something about it that.

People know you gave them a publicity, whether that's what it is nowadays. Right. You've interviewed them, you've given them publicity. So it is, in a sense, a good favor.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's that law of reciprocity that kicks in there, so. Well, you mentioned that you break even on a show and maybe even make rent with it. And so you do take advertisements. What was that tipping point like for you when you said, okay, I really do think we're gonna take some ads?

Oh, gosh. It's a psychological. It's so silly. It's a number. Like, I just. I'm in a mastermind group with a couple other podcasters in our sphere. I won't name names, but some of. One of them is like, number one. If people can probably guess who he is, his name is biblical. I'll give you that hint. And literally. So they were asking. It kind of blew my mind that he was like, how do you get advertisers? I was like, why are you asking me? Like, why are you asking me? I'm just little old Lance from inside the firm. Like, I'm not really famous or anything like that. And so I explained to them how it worked. And the big thing, the tipping point was I go, we needed 5,000 downloads a month. Like, why did I think that number was necessary? I think for me, usually as a salesman or even somebody, if I go out to like, ask a woman on a date or make a new friend or something like that is like, I need or go make a sales pitch to a potential client. I have to be confident. So I knew for me, it was just not having the confidence. And like, what is a number that feels good to me psychologically that I can talk about confidently? It was just having 5,000 downloads a month. Now we do on average about 20,000 downloads a month. So the goal was always to try to compensate for our time. Because you made that point earlier. Like, it's not free time is.

Well, especially in a firm. Right. That your billable hours are valuable.

Right. And then I. I have four children and a wife and all of that, like, it's a big deal. That's. We always wanted to get monetized in that way, at least get compensated for our time. So for me, the tipping point was just a number. And Then after that, then I. Then I had no. Once we got sponsors and some of our sponsors were like the. Actually Dell. Like Dell actually sponsored us. I think it won't be once we hit the 10,000 download a month point for. In which in the podcast world, 10,000 listeners is not a lot.

No, but your niche, your listeners are really, really niche. And that makes the difference.

Yeah. Yes. And that's what I was explaining in the Mastermind group too, because I go, there's two ways to look at this, guys. Because one of the guys in the Mastermind group, he just went from 10,000 followers on Instagram to a hundred thousand, like within a matter of days, because he had one piece of content go absolutely nuts. And he goes, so he's asking me the same kind of questions. I go, hey, guys, there's two ways to look at the subscribers numbers or the downloads numbers and all of that. And it's just like Tracy said, if you have a small number, then your argument becomes, I am niche. I have a very focused potential corporate sponsor. Or the opposite is like, ah, but I have a. I have a wide reach, obviously, that they all. That's the argument. So I think there's a power in both ways. I wish somebody would told me that right away. How about that? So now hopefully somebody's hearing it.

Yeah, no, this is the thing. Look, it's for my 3D print podcast, just like yours. It was easy for me to make a decision to take advertisements when we did, because it wasn't. The advertisers weren't a true alignment. Dell is not a true alignment with you as an architect. Like, it's not like you're endorsing something that's, you know, so I could. We used to take. Hewlett Packard was our big sponsor. So Hewlett Packard is easy to be. It's not going to make me look bad. So there's no association level that I had to worry about at that level. But I also didn't make it cheap because I knew my audience was smaller. In my case, we did have 100,000amonth, like, so it was a little bit bigger. But yeah, it was valuable to them, so I could charge them quite a bit of money for that space. And I did it rarely. So I didn't take constant sponsors. I didn't just let the streaming ads go on, which are like, pays you pennies at the end of the day.

Oh, yeah.

Listeners like, would never do that. Like, I think that ruins that. But I think that as an architect and as a designer, I had this perspective, and I think you do too, that the value you've created is valuable and it's a little bit different than this. Sort of like, oh, I just am an influencer and I make a hundred posts a day and you know, like, it just like, you know, they don't have the same mindset to the value that they've created, so they don't go and ask for enough.

Yeah, yeah. And then it's like, okay, so value is subjective. I mean, if you're, if you're doing like me Z kind of economics, then it's value subjective. Right. Because it's like, well, what is my house worth if I sell it? Whatever it sells for. Right. So it's subjective to somebody who's doing that. I'm fascinated by it. Like, I feel like my value with the podcast, my personal value to it, where, how I see it as valuable, keeps evolving. So for me, this last year, the big epiphany was it's like, oh, wow. Public speaking is like very easy now, and it's. There's not a lot of us. And I feel so confident talking to people. People just randomly talking to people, like, in that kind of way. And so where does it head next? I think it's this ever evolving set of values that keep emerging if you just keep doing it. So I think that's why. That's one of the other reasons why, like, no problem, let's get to a thousand episodes.

Yeah, let's keep going. Wonderful. Well, I'm so glad you're going to keep going, but I think that that's really a good point. It's like every hundred episodes or so, which, you know, if you're doing two a week, that's a year's worth. It's a good time to sit back and evaluate it and say, hey, this year I felt like we really did accomplish this with it. I'd like to tackle this next. And what is that? And so if it's more speaking events or whatever, you know, you're thinking, I feel it. Right. I'm at. I'm hitting my stride here. That's going to be my goal for next year, is to make sure that these generate, that you're putting it out there. You've created an intention for that.

Yeah, yeah. And then you asked me, also before we started recording too, of what was my goals of being a guest and guesting on podcasts. I only started doing that just this last year. So the tipping point again for. For me to do that was I felt like it Was kind of like when we started the show, when we started the podcast, we would have basically almost got to about year seven when we started the show, and then we. Of having the firm. And if the statistics, if anybody hasn't heard it, is like, once you get to year seven as a startup, your chances of failing go down so much dramatically. Like, most businesses fail within the first seven years. That's what I was trying to say. So we didn't fail. And it was like, oh, we should tell our story. We didn't. Holy cow, we didn't. Good. Yeah, we should talk about it in this sort of way. So I felt the same way when it came to guessing on podcasts, as I was like, I'm 40. I feel like I'm established and I have some authority in the space and I have some things to tell people. And it wasn't. It's not just. If anybody Googles me, they will find very personal stories, like some about me finding my real dad when I was 33, I'm now 40, stuff like that, where I'm just completely laying it bare and explode. So it's kind of been therapy, too. I don't know where the positivity is going to come back from that. I'm not that kind of person that says, I put good karma out, I'm getting good karma in. I just put it out, Put it out, put it out, put it out, put it out. And don't think of anything back. And maybe it will be like you and I were talking about earlier. Just a piece of mail from somebody and say, like, hey, I heard that episode. Maybe like, it saved them or something. Like, I don't know. But I know that, like, I shouldn't keep this sort of stuff bottled up inside. And that's the tipping point of why I do guesting.

Yeah. Well, that's good. I'm so glad that you do, and I'm glad that we connected up that way to make sure, because, I mean, it totally intrigued me because I was like, architecture and design, I don't get to talk about that much. And so, like, I, you know, done a lot of financial podcasts, a lot of health and wellness ones here where I interview hosts, and it's nice to interview in some area that I have personal interest in and a professional one as well. So I'm so glad you did decide to guest more and reach out now. Are you doing video yet?

Yes, we're on YouTube. So you can tell. I'm gonna tell. My daughter knows. I have a fishing channel, a YouTube fishing channel. Like, it's not even. It's fully monetized and it's. We have latest episode, like 7,000 views. Like, a lot. She still doesn't think I'm famous.

Yeah, that's famous for fishing, dad.

Yeah. We made the transition to YouTube, I think maybe two or three years ago is we finally decided we should be on YouTube as well.

So how are you finding time to keep the show at a professional level and services and all this stuff that you have to do to produce the show? Because it's your time on the recording side of things. But how do you kind of keep controls and manage all of that?

I'll talk about it in two ways. So the Monday show is different than the Friday show. Just for gearing up for it, I use this Service. I use podmatch.com and it has been a godsend.

Right. That's how we met. So.

Yes, exactly. For finding guests and also guesting. And after you get enough authority on there in both ways, it kind of just trickles in. And if anything, you're just beating people off with a stick, which is awesome. It was not like that before when you first started the Monday show. So that's very critical. I have some of my own personal criteria that I go through when I find guests much like you. I want unique people with a unique story. I like when people have a struggle story. I like telling that story of overcoming adversity and not being victims in that kind of way. Like, I just really like stories like the movie Rudy. You know what I mean? They're just like an underdog, because that's me in my soul. An underdog. Grew up in a town of 500 people or less. Very rural northwest North Dakota, Indian reservation, lower middle class. Now I'm out here crushing it. So that's how I tackle the Monday show. And like I said, now I just slided it down to, like, I use calendly to book guests. And I only have two slots, Tuesday and Thursday at 9am MST. If we can't make it, we can't make it. And it is what it is. And then the Friday show, I could not do without Al Gore. I'm not even trying to fluff him up here, but, like, there are plenty of times where it'll be a Friday morning and 6am and I'm texting him, we're preparing the show notes we try to record at 7am on Friday. We publish later on in the day. Plenty of times where he's either text me or I text him and I go, I got nothing. What do you got? And he goes, don't worry, I'll cover. I'll carry the show. And then he carries the show because he has topics and we make it happen. And we have a really good banter and discussion back and forth. As you noted earlier, we're best friends. Best. My kids call him Uncle Al. I mean, he's my brother from another mother. I've known Al since 2003, so almost 20 years. We've cried together, we've laughed together. He's watched my took. Taking care of my kids. I've watched his. All that kind of good stuff. That's how we make time for it. But we also make sure we keep a strict schedule. That's the critical part of it because.

You'Re holding each other accountable for that time slot together. Because it is. And that is the hardest part with the co host that we. I hear now my co host was my husband and yet he would still cancel on me. So we had to like, we really had to set up a system to make sure that that happened. And one side doesn't feel like they're carrying it all the time.

And our last adjust was to move it from we were doing at 10am Mountain standard. Now we just moved it to 7am because we're like, there's no excuse. Because sometimes what would end up happening is like it's spring and it's summer and we live in Colorado. And I go, hey, I'm going camping.

And you go, oh, really nice today.

Yeah, like, hey, I'm leaving work early. And then he's like, well, let's just. So now we knock it out. It's all knocked out. I can still leave early. That's how we make it happen.

I love that. I love that. Well, I am so glad that you reached out to me and that we could talk about this. But let's really talk a little bit about the business in general because let's talk about the firm because we're hitting into some hard times. I've been hearing some contraction. I think this is going to be like a really ideal time for your show to take off because this is the hard time when those firms that are in their less than seven years need you.

Well, I'm glad you're optimistic about that part of it. I am now optimistic. Thank you for the white pill. I wasn't even thinking about that. But hopefully that's one of. That is also one of the ideas behind the firm is when Al went out to New York City after graduating College worked for a very prominent world famous architect. The hint is that I'll give you, everybody is. He was the designer of the original remake of the World Trade center towers after they got demolished. Like super famous architect. I came out to Colorado and worked for two regionally famous architects. But both of those firms had, I think, one thing in common. And that was they put all their eggs in one basket. Just one, doing one typology. So when it got wiped out, like these hard times that you talk about are coming up. So on our show we've preached over and over and over again is diversity is your strength. If you actually do have a diverse work set, you're not just doing one typology. Right. You're working for the 1%, the 2%, the 3%, like the whole thing. You can't just be focused on one single thing. And because if you only have one leg on that stool and it gets cut out, you're done. You need to have four or five. One gets cut out. It's no problem in that sort of way. So although those kind of like tools and tricks and tips and everything is what we go over on the show. So I hope it does take off in that kind of way for sure. Business wise. Worse, we're as we give weekly updates on what's going on economically, which is, I think a big missing piece of the pie for architects is you and I were talking about that before we started is like, you went to risd, I went to North Dakota State. And we did not. There was no business classes.

I said there was no math. Right. I literally took no math. That's like how bad it was.

Yeah. So we tried to really hone in the focus on that of like, hey guys and gals, here's what's going on in the economy. And then we've even developed a couple courses beyond for architects that want to expand and have more legs in the stool.

I think that's so smart because architects love continuing education. Like they love. They all have certifications.

Yeah. It's called Architects Guide 2. So it's architectsguide2.com and what it teaches is it teaches you how to become a general contractor, which is it's trying to focus on people who have never really swung a hammer. There's hacks and ways you can get in and figure out how to do those things and lean on your subs in that sort of way. But the whole concept with just that, if I'm focusing in on that part of this interview, is that if you have architecture projects right You've already. You have such a bigger advantage over all these other general contractors because guess what? You got to do for, like, however long it took to design their house. Right. For example, let's say it took three months to design their house. You got to interview them. You got to interview them for three months.

Yeah. You got a relationship built.

Oh, my gosh. Maybe they trust you already. So there's no, like, skepticism or anything. And then if you present to them like we do in the course is like, this is an open book concept kind of contract. You get to see all the bids, you get to see all of our markup. Like, there's no hidden fees. You can ask me about anything. We're just openly, completely transparent with the whole thing. And then if you have those architecture clients, like, a lot of them are cash, meaning, like, they have hundreds of thousands or even millions in the bank ready to just build. You don't even have to go through a bank sometimes to do the financing and all the draws and everything like that. If you're able to just turn, let's say, four of those projects that are your architecture projects into now building projects, and let's say the architecture industry takes a crap. You have just extended the life of your firm probably a year or two with cash. And how long do you really need to extend it before maybe the interest rates come down and then the economy loosens up again, just like we saw in 2008. You only need to do it for a couple years. Like, the recessions are hard and deep, but they're short, too.

They're short because it picks up before in specific sectors, and that's what you find. Yeah, well, you know, Lance, this is why I think, this is why I believe that you're going to be positioned in the right way. Because when we had the dip in, like, 2008 and all of those things like that, the thing that I already had going for me was speaking. And so then when the dip happened again in around 2014, and we still had a little bit more dip and around there and then into 2017, as it was getting still a little difficult, we had our podcast. And so it was like speaking, podcasting, like, all of a sudden it took off for me. And the next thing I know, I was writing articles for Inc. Magazine and asked to do things, and I had more projects than I knew what to do with, and I ended up in a whole new market area from that. And so I do think that you're going to find another leg to the stool. Like, you're just going to find another one in the next year. I think it's going to happen for you.

You're just making my day. I can't tell you, like, how much you're making me smile because that is one of the. Was originally one of the goals is like, well, what if we did a podcast and we got paid to do it? Like, what if that paid for one of our salaries during a downturn? And then we could do what responsible CEOs typically do is like they cut their salaries if they can, and maybe they make profit at the end and take their dividend that way, but keep their employees intact. Because that's like the biggest shockwave to a small business. Maybe not a big one, but a small one for sure. Like, if you have a small shop like us, we have eight architects, including me, myself and Alex. Our biggest asset is our employees. People that have been loyal to us, too, for like six, seven years. You can't even replace that. Like, it's impossible to replace that. All the intricacies that they know, all of the past projects they can just reference for new employees to look at. They know exactly what me and Alex are looking for. They know exactly how to interact with clients and all of that. So if you're able to keep yourself afloat in that kind of way and keep that intact, that's where I think that then when you come out of that, this next recession, we're in one for sure. But when you come out of it and if you can keep your team intact but most people couldn't, you're going to crush, like, then you're really going to crush.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm excited for your future here. I can't wait to see that and, and see what's going on. And if you're out there and you're running any kind of firm agency, whether it's a law firm or not, there's a lot to learn from the conversation that Alex and Lance are having together because I guarantee you there's similarities in your business and your business model. Well, Lance, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate you. Can't wait to see what's next for Inside the Firm. And you'll have to come back and tell us all about it 100%.

Thanks so much for having me on the show, Tracy. Appreciate it.

I love it when I learn something new. You know, I've heard of Lean Manufacturing. I interviewed our engineer on Lean Manufacturing already on this show. So, like, you know, I've had some exposure to that. But his mention of 2 second lean. I read the book since I recorded this episode and I'm recording this outro afterwards. Fascinating, fascinating ideas around it. So what we glean from being able to interview people, the research that we're doing, the informativeness, this is the core value of my podcast to me. It's giving me ideas into things I didn't even imagine and it's pulling disparate ideas from different industries. And I love that about podcasting. I really think there's a lot of takeaways today from what we heard from Lance and from co hosting, from building a guide too, for your own industry. That's a great way to do supplement what you're doing, make a great way for you to get more speaking opportunities in your industry. The idea that some of what he's done and how he's developed things came out of a mastermind as well. Those are some really great things. Doing more episodes per week, you're getting a wider audience, you're getting more feel. You can have a different focus for the show. I think that that really has given them an opportunity to really expand what they're doing with Inside the Firm. So just some of those things are just all kinds of ideas that you should be taking away. When you listen to one of our feature brand, one of our feed your brand episodes, you're getting tactics. When you're listening here to the binge factor episodes, you're getting ideas about how to apply this right. So I really hope you're taking away those things. If you try anything that Lance suggested or something that you're modeling after a show, let us know. Reach out to Lance, thank him for it. Be sure to listen to the show Inside the Firm. Alex Gore, Lance Caiko. Great, great show. Even if you're not that excited about the architecture industry like I am a little fangirling on it, but you're going to get some interesting insights into ways that you might be able to develop it, no matter what type of firm you have. So I look forward to bringing you more great podcasters, great insights into different types of podcasts as we keep going. I've got quite the list of people and really diverse ide of what's coming through here on the Binge Factor. So I hope you'll hang out with us as we continue throughout this year exploring very, very different types of podcast as we go forward. So, Lance Keiko, thank you so much for being on this show. I really appreciate you. Love Inside the Firm. Thank you for bringing your podcast into this world.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and videocasting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.

Sam.