From Architecture to Podcast Growth: Niche Strategies with Lance Cayko

Big audiences are nice, but they’re not the point. If you’ve ever stared at your podcast download numbers and wondered whether any of this is worth it, this chat with architect, entrepreneur, educator, and Inside The Firm co-host Lance Cayko will reset your definition of success and give you practical ways to think about growth.

We get into Lance’s origin story, from small-town construction jobs and learning how service businesses really make money, to building an architecture practice that lasts. From there, we unpack why he started a niche podcast in 2017 when almost nobody in architecture was openly talking about running a firm. The takeaway is clear: a focused audience can outperform a massive one, especially when your podcasting strategy is aligned with real business goals like clients, referrals, partnerships, coaching, and credibility.

We also talk shop on the realities of audience engagement, the 50-episode sustainability threshold, and why podcasting can be the best networking tool available. Then we look ahead at the future of podcasting and YouTube, the tension between long-form storytelling and short-form clips, and why audio quality standards will keep rising as listeners get pickier.

If you enjoy honest, actionable conversations about podcast growth, podcast monetization, and modern communication strategy, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more creators can find it.

Connect with Lance
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lance-cayko-1227031a/
Website: https://f9productions.com/
https://longmontcommunitygardens.org/
Podcast: https://www.insidethefirmpodcast.com/

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

Carl 0:04

Welcome to Communications Connected Community, the Podcasters Podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern-day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people to make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news, updates, latest trends and topics from this ever-evolving space. Let's dive into today's episode. And our guest today is Lance Cayko. He is an architect, an entrepreneur, and an educator. He co-founded K9 Productions, teaches architecture, co-hosts inside the firm. We're going to be talking about his journey into that, and leads Longmont Community Gardens, promoting sustainability and community growth. He is a sought-after podcast guest. I don't know how many shows he's been on. We're going to find that out though. He's also a very successful podcast host. Lance, welcome to the podcast.

From Farm Kid To Architect

Lance 1:05

Thank you for having me, Carl. It's a pleasure. It's a thrill to have you here. And it's always nice to talk to a fellow podcaster.

Carl 1:12

I promise I will not start by asking, so tell me your origin story. But seriously. Tell me your origin story. What led you into the architectural space? What was it that you know you woke up and said, hey, this is a space that I want to be in.

Lance 1:28

As far as podcasting, or do you mean career-wise?

Carl 1:31

As far as architecture, yeah. Which came first, the architecture or the podcast? Neither.

Lance 1:36

I actually wanted to be a builder first. Oh, yeah. Okay. So I grew up in a small town in northwest North Dakota between a cattle ranch and a sugar beet farm. So half the family were sugar beet farmers, the other half was cattle ranchers. And on the sugar beet farm, we would have to hand irrigate our fields. We were kind of poor farmers. And my dad was basically running the farm. And I tried working with him one summer when I was 13, and the mosquitoes almost carried me away. I know you know what I'm talking about being up there in Canada. And you know what it's yeah, it's like 90%, 90 degrees, just awful conditions. I didn't get along with my dad too well. And I'd always had a proclivity to draw and build with like Legos and Lincoln Longs, you know, and that sort of story. So I lasted about a week with my dad, and I said, Hey, this is not for me. And by the way, I already have a replacement. My best friend Chris will just take this job. He loves this job. He loves you. And he said, Well, you got to do something. And I go, I know, like I want money and I want to buy the newest pair of Jordans or whatever I was going to buy that year, way back when. So I called up his best friend Bruce, who's a building contractor, and I said, What, you know, I need a job. What do you got? And he goes, You can be my gopher. And I go, Cool, what's that? And he goes, Well, what you're gonna do is you're gonna go for this and go for that when you're done going for the things. Then you can get up on the roof and learn how to roof. And I was like, Cool, $7.25 an hour sounds like a plan. I was the best dang gopher he ever had, Carl. He actually saw a lot of potential in me, pulled me aside one day and said, Hey, I'm paying you $7.25 an hour. What do you think I'm charging the clients? And I go, $7.25 an hour. And he laughed, and I was embarrassed. And then he explained to me how service-based business works, how they make money, why there's a multiplier effect, all that kind of good stuff. And then what I got to see at the end of the summer was being with Bruce so much and then contrasting it with the dad who raised me is I kind of got the rich dad poor dad experience, even before I read the book. And what I mean by that is I I got to see like Bruce's the way he treated money and the way he thought about money was he didn't have an anxiety about it. Whereas the dad who raised me had a huge piece of anxiety about it. And so I was like, just sold. I want to be a builder. I want to be Bruce. I want to be free from anxiety. So I would work a different trade in construction every summer until I was about 20, 21. Even went to trade school for two years. By the end of trade school, I was like, well, I actually finally love school for the first time. And then I was thinking, like, how do I get building clients? And I was like, well, it seems like the architects start first. And as I was looking at a set of blueprints, if I was an architect first, then I would actually have a like amazing sales funnel that maybe builders don't even have, you know, and I can convince them to build. And that's what eventually led me to architecture. I went to North Dakota State, just south again of Canada there, not too far from Winnipeg. As a matter of fact, I was in Winnipeg this summer with my girlfriend Jennifer, who's an architect too. That's what kind of led me to be architect first. So it was sort of a roundabout way. And then eventually, when I became architect, then I went full circle and now I'm an architect builder.

Why Launch Inside The Firm

Carl 4:31

So you've added quite a bit to the gamut then. Uh figured out sugar beet farming wasn't your thing. That 90 degree humidity with 90% mosquitoes in the air wasn't your thing. And architecture and building. And it's funny how you mentioned funnel, because I don't think we would in business, people didn't talk about funnels back then, right? They weren't saying, you know, if you do this, this is the funnel for this. It's more of a digital term that even though we know what it is, right? So, anyways, congratulations on the success with that. Of all the things you could do to promote or get the word out there about what it is that you're doing, what led you to the podcasting space? What was it?

Lance 5:07

Well, I think anybody my age, like early 40s, late 30s, Gen X slash millennial, you're in this weird pocket of like you become a fanboy of Joe Rogan, Adam Carolla, all those kind of podcasters, like the OG podcasters. And then you want to emulate them. And I think that's where part of it came from. I used to be just a huge podcast junkie, and I still am in a certain way, as somebody who just guests on a lot of shows and then does their own podcast. So we started in 2017 doing the show Inside the Firm, and it's titled that because we wanted to bring people inside of our architecture firm. Back then, there were hardly any art podcasts that architects were actually just talking about what it's like to have an architectural practice, like bring you inside the firm. A lot of architectures really hold all that close to their best. It's kind of a very protectionist and pretentious profession, typically. Like I'm one of the down-to-earth ones, believe it or not. And why 2017 is because that would have been year seven of me and Alex's business. And anybody who knows business or even a little bit about it knows that usually within the first seven years, that's seven years. If you make it to year seven, your chances of failure are like vastly they're minuscule compared to that year one. Year one, like you have a 90% chance of failure. It's very, very high. So we got to year seven. It was like, we should tell everybody our story. I want to like inspire the youth that, hey, you can do it. You don't have to be this Debbie Downer. Don't listen to the media, shut them off. You can do it. You can do it just like us with nothing.

Carl 6:33

I love it. Now, as a guy that works in the media, I do understand where that's coming from too, because especially lately, you hear all the doom and gloom, and some there are some sad things going on in the world. I get that. But the one thing you don't hear about is all the good things that are going on in the world. It's boring. Yeah, it's one of the things it is. It's boring. People and people actually do eat up. That's why, speaking of podcasting, one of the top formats is true crime because people like to hear about other people getting, you know, murdered and or having other unfortunate things happen to them. It's not by chance that it is. That's just the crazy thing about it. It's funny that you mentioned that back when you started around 2017, that architects and architecture was not a tapped market because I found the same thing when I started my podcast. And I started mine in 2019. And at the time, I was doing speaker training. So it was about positioning yourself on stage, voice inflection, things like that. There were a lot of podcasts related to Toastmasters, there were podcasts related to Dale Carnegie type stuff, or uh even TED or TEDx. And there were a few other podcasts related to speakers or speaker training, but not many. So I felt like I was a trailblazer in 2017. Podcasts have been around by that point, about or eight nineteen rather, podcasts have been around 18 years, 17 years. I still felt like I was a trailblazer in the space. And you must have felt that too in in those early years. You're telling your story, but hey, you're also blazing the trail because nobody else is doing it.

Listener Feedback And Analog Hate Mail

Lance 8:01

Yeah, 100%. And then we've been flattered because there's been a couple copycats since then. Like our our little key line with the podcast is how to start, run, and grow a business. We didn't even say architecture, we just said how to start running. I mean, our that's been our focus is to bring the more business acumen into the artistry of architecture. A lot of architects are just real heavy on I just care about the creativity, I just care about the art. I don't even care about the budget of the clients. Like it's all about me, me, me, me, me. And we're going, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I think that like these people are paying your bills. You should be providing like a different kind of level of customer service. And we don't have like necessarily the mission or even the thoughts that we could really believe that we could change the whole profession, but incrementally, the amount of fandom we've got, which is not like exorbitant, but we've gotten enough emails, private messages, actual physical mail by people that I usually get those pieces of mail on like the my worst day, like if I'm having a down day, and I'll go, hey, just wanted to reach out and say thanks. I've been a listener since whenever. And you inspired me to start my own business and go off on my own. And I just want to say that meant a lot. And I'm like, oh my gosh, wow. Okay, because we sometimes forget, I think, is right, it's like we're talking in this microphone, we don't get to hear back typically. So you feel like you're in an echo chamber. And that that's been really rewarding about the whole experience.

Carl 9:14

And unlike conventional media, such as you know, radio, I spent years in radio. And if you wanted to hear your listeners, you just give them a reason to call you up, right? So I've got a prize to give away, call me now, and people would call. Or you would say something that, you know, I'll say controversial, but you would say something that would engage them and they would call up. Yeah. With podcasting, there's less engagement. It does happen, especially with some of the larger shows. But for smaller shows or shows that haven't taken root yet, and yours obviously has taken root by now, but the audience engagement is you know it's there because you can see the downloads, but you don't know who's listening or when. So when you get those calls, well, maybe not calls, when you get those emails, it must, as you said, it must just like boost your day and go, like, I'm doing the right thing. I feel energized again, as opposed to uh, you know, oh, life sucks. Like they feel good. So this is so funny, right?

Lance 10:10

It's like podcasting is the most digital thing you could do. Is it's even more digital, I think, than radio. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but that's just my little opinion here is like, okay, because we're putting it on the internet, it's all zeros and ones and stuff like that, right? As compared to traditional radio. But then I get the most analog hate mail you can imagine. Like, we have gotten a few of those. And I got a recent one where it was another architect, he was he was not happy with what I had to say, and he wrote he hand wrote me on like four postcards. Hate mail. It was like adorable, but also I was like, oh, it's like analog. This is great.

Carl 10:46

I will say you are right that conventional radio is definitely more analog, so it's not very digital at all. But here's what I would do with that. That's to me, that's in the radio world, that's what we call show prep. That's where you say, Hey, got some postcards from I don't know if you want to give the name, but okay, got some postcards from Bill. Bill, thank you for writing a very conventional response. Bill's not very happy with something we said on the show. You can actually have some fun with it, right? It yeah, it's definitely a way that you can do that. You said that you're you're doing quite well, the show's going quite well, and of course it landed in the top one percentile with a hundred thousand listeners, day one, right?

Downloads, Revenue, And The 50-Episode Rule

Lance 11:27

Yeah, you're right, exactly. Just launched it and it went nuts. Yeah. There's the poker face for you. That's just I know. Yep. Yeah, it's uh it well, the stat that shocked me at the end of the day was not so much our numbers, but finding out it's like, oh, to make it in, I can't remember what percentages. It's sort of like the business thing is, oh, within the first seven years you fail or whatever. And if you can make it past year one, then your success rate is you know it exponentially better and better, better. Uh 50, 50 episodes. If you do 50 episodes of a podcast, if you can make it past that, your chances of sustainability and making it there are they just get exponential. And I think we're at like 670 or something at this point. So it's a it's a slog. There's definitely ups and downs. And I would say, like, honestly, our best year was probably two years ago. And we've kind of been trending back down again as we took part of our terrestrial audience and moved them to YouTube only two years ago. And that's I think what the numbers and where we're seeing. But the way I really try to think about it is like, even if any particular week, let's say that I had 500 downloads, I try to always have the visual of I was in front of 500 people in an auditorium. And that's the difference maker for me, because it's like as somebody who's lectured in universities multiple for many years now as a professor, even when you have like 40, 50 students in front of you, that is a lot of ears. Like you can affect a lot of people in positive ways. So that's my lens with it.

Carl 12:51

I think the other thing, too, that I want to piggyback on, and we have talked about this on this show before, is that the numbers aren't exactly the same as the numbers that are expected in conventional media. In conventional media, you have hundreds of thousands or millions of viewers or listeners to a particular show, that's a metric for success. You could have 30 listeners to a podcast, and it can be one of the top shows because to that person who's hosting, if it's generating the revenue or getting them the goals that they want from that show, I'll give you an example. I have a colleague, we were doing her show up until recently, and she's pivoted and she's doing something else for the time being. She'll probably come back to the show. And she was averaging, and again, not that it's a good idea to look at your download numbers all the time, just as an idea. She was getting about 35, 40 listeners, 40 downloads per episode. She would get two pieces of business roughly every year. And she attuned that to her podcast because she knew she wasn't getting it from social media, because social media was pretty much a zero return on her investment for that. So she knew she was getting it from somewhere. So she attunes it to the podcast. And a client to her is worth about $30,000. So $60,000 in revenue annually by having 30, 40, 50 listeners every week to your show. So that's the measure of success. And I think that's the mindset too, is people get in saying, well, how am I going to build my audience? How am I going to get that 10,000 listeners so I can monetize my show? It's the wrong thinking when you're coming at it.

Lance 14:23

Yeah, a hundred percent. I like to also think of it as the focused audience. And I think that's what you were getting at. I'll just be autistic about it and say it. Like you have a very, very focused audience. We have monetized it in so many different ways that I one of them is probably the most unconventional that I didn't even see it coming. Like it's unconventional in my mind because I never thought about it in that way. Is my business partners? We had a record profit year a couple years ago. And with our show, then he started another side business of his own. It's called buildabetterco.com. And what he does is he coaches architects specifically as a business coach. And he gets paid like to start his course, I think it's like five figures. All he had to get was their first year, is the last year. It's like that's all he could handle anyway, was like five or six people to sign up to speak back to your numbers there, Carl. Then, like, well, that's 50, 60k in his pocket extra. Our audience is not that huge, I will tell you. Like, our average downloads per month are like five to ten thousand people. And in that space, it's pretty big. But like in the context of all the other people out there, it's pretty small. But like, who cares? The focus audience, look at how it translated over to monetization and helping out other people. We've also even just had other architects who are local listeners, but for some reason will not take on a certain job in a certain town just because maybe they're too busy, then refer us to that client, and we've gotten that in different ways. Like the last thing I'll say is like for me, it's a self-business coach. Like when I have people on the Monday show, I specifically have, which is me interviewing somebody like yourself, Carl, or another business owner, or like authors. I have a lot of authors on and people that are trying to do other kind of coachings, and like their stories are so interesting to me, or like in their bio and everything, when they reach out to be on the show, I will hand pick people where I'm like, oh, I want to pick their brain about that. And then there's been many times where like an author, if my inclination is right to have them on, but halfway through the show, I'll be like, hey, I just bought your book. Thanks. Like, and then it literally changes my life. Like, train your empathy was a big one. And I'm like, it totally transformed my life, even personal and professional wise. So, like, I mean, we're both podcast advocates and everything, but for me, it's just multifaceted, like probably like 12 different ways I've benefited monetarily, personally, and all that kind of good stuff.

Using A Podcast To Network

Carl 16:35

This is a great conversation, and I'm glad we're having it because I think for for someone who's listening to this and is going, I don't know if podcasting is for me, or even for a seasoned host that's you know beating their head against the wall, saying, Why is my show not successful? Why am I not getting you know the the large audience? There's really some great messaging here that you're sharing. I think part of the messaging that I'm hearing between the lines is the content. If you have riveting content, you're going to attract the listener, you'll be engaging, you will have repeat clients or repeat listeners, but you'll also eventually have them signing up for programs, doing things, whatever those calls to action are within your show, because you'll have their attention as opposed to it's just all about me, me, me, me, me. I'm just talking, talking, talking, you know, blowing air and saying nothing, right? So you've positioned it in such a way that you're allowing yourself to do that. And you're enjoying the success of the journey, but the listeners are all along on that journey with you. 100%.

Lance 17:37

There's then there's networking too. Like uh probably in the last four or five years. Well, when we launched the Monday morning portion of it, used to be just one episode a week on a Friday. Now we do the one on Monday where we reach out to other people. And like it's a tool for power, like in the sense of I have the ability to put this microphone in front of like a civil engineer that I would like to work with. And then I have, I'm like, hey, let's uh have you on the show. Even though as an extrovert, like networking in the traditional sense of let's go have coffee and shake hands and you know, or do or like join the chamber. I'm much more of like a hey, let's go, let's go talk on the show, you know, for a half hour. So I've had a lot of people, and then what they end up doing is like because they're on the show, then they end up, you know, sharing on their media networks, their social media networks all over the place. But then there's sort of a they feel like you owe you a little bit. So you're always at the top of their mind. Even if they you're on the top of their mind for the next 12 months, it just needs to be you need to be on the top of their mind like that one time for that one referral, and then it all came back to you in the end. Like it is a long game, I think, in a lot of ways. I just don't, I'm with you, Carl. It's not about like finding, even though we do have folks we read copies for traditionally. We've done plenty of traditional copy reading for uh various companies.

Carl 18:54

And you're right, it is a long game, not a short game for anyone who comes to podcasting and says, I just want to see where this is going to take me over the next six months, and I'm only going to post episodes every other week. And I'll say, Great, can you do that for maybe two years to see for uh better ideas to where this is going to take you? I just as I said, based on some of the things that we've shared, is that you know, you get to episode 50. Okay. You know, you're sticking in the tent in the trenches a little bit longer, you're starting to see some people are reaching out to you in the show. You're maybe making some changes. Maybe you're instead of doing it once every two weeks, maybe you're saying, Oh, I want to do it once a week now. I've got the bandwidth. And you're taking it seriously. And people pay attention and they'll follow you. When you make a change, one thing that I found is when you make a change to the show and you're established long enough, people will follow you. So you've said that you're doing two shows a week now. I'm assuming that you have listeners for both.

Lance 19:46

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Vastly. I mean, yeah, some of them totally skip the Friday show because they're like, I'm not an architect, but I really like the kind of guests that Lance procures to be on the Monday show. It's always been about that, is like, I want to, I mean, I knew it was like there's only so many architects we can capture with this, because there's about 120,000 licensed architects in the United States. It's like, well, I can, you know, not all of them are gonna listen. And if you start doing all the um math, you go dwindle it down, it's like, uh, I think it wouldn't hurt to expand a little bit, which is reflex or it's a reflection of us anyway, because we're not just architects, we're builders, we're real estate developers, and different kinds of uh we're just not one thing.

Starting Over In 2025

Carl 20:23

Right, right. Um gazing into your crystal ball. Well, actually, no, let's take it in another direction first. It's 2017. And actually, no. Switch that. It's 2025. You're starting new, you've never done a podcast before. What would you do differently knowing now what you know based on what you've done in the last eight years as a host? What would you do differently?

Lance 20:48

Oh, goodness, that is a great question because I felt like we did the the basics. I felt like we did like the podcasting basics correctly from the beginning, you know, where I'm sure people have heard of the show, but I'll recap it in my own way, is that like, you know, you're supposed to have like five shows banked. So you don't start off and just have publish one and then like you get sick and then you can't do the second one. So you at least have a bank of shows to do. So we did that right, and that worked for us well. Then we did the the right thing where you're supposed to like reach out to the people who you want to emulate or that you align with, and then you get on their shows, and then you start the sharing and stuff like that. I think what I would do is I would I would have a different lens of maturity on the whole thing because I think I let myself get pulled in different directions and gave some opinions that I think are just irrelevant to kind of what the focus of the show. Um the one thing I think I would replicate though is probably some of our most compelling episodes were when we did our real estate development and we really opened our chests up and it was like a live story. So there were people that were kind of waiting, I mean, really on the edge of their seats every Friday for anticipation of that episode. So, how do you replicate? That where like people are just chomping at the bit for it to go live on a Friday, I would investigate how to do that a little bit better and tease it a little bit more in that way. Whereas I think we were just very obtuse at the beginning.

The Future: Formats And Quality

Carl 22:13

It sounds like though that you, as you said, you hit all the all the basics. And yeah, yeah, great answer to that. I also want to ask you, this is where the crystal ball comes in. Okay. Gazing into your crystal ball and with the experience, because you're eight years, nine years into the podcasting space now as a host, also now doing guesting. Where do you see this crazy industry headed, say over the next two to five years? Podcasting.

Lance 22:40

Yeah. I mean, I hope it continues to flourish. I guess I was I'm surprised at the number of people that still continue to want to get into it. Maybe they still think they're pioneers too, Carl, like we did, you know, just seven or eight years ago. And then you put the full lens on and you're like, it's been around for 18 years. I'm like, oh my gosh, it actually it actually did. And it didn't blow up until iTunes. Everybody knows that. Like until you could, or until it had the, you know, the function on the on the smartphones and everything like that. So I hope it continues to grow. I hope more people continue to to explore it. But I hope that we kind of come to some conclusions or or just we have a better idea at the end of this of like what is the best duration for people and what we should be recording at. Because everybody's kind of guessing. And I know you and I sort of not debated it, but discussed it earlier. We had our own opinions about how long content should be and in what format it should be. The most positive thing that I've seen and that I hope continues in trends is like since COVID, the amount of people I talk to overseas is astounding. So the first guest I did today was with a gentleman out in the UK, and now I'm talking to you in Canada. The day before today, I had a guy on my show from Bulgaria. It's like phenomenal. I mean, how else would I be able to network in this way? And then I try to keep up with social media and link in with them and build this bigger network for that. So, like, what a cool way to just network with people. For me, it's the perfect way to network with people.

Carl 24:03

And that's one of the things that I think people forget when they're considering to or not to do a podcast, is the global connections that you are going to make if you do it right. Yeah, you can interview people in your backyard and that's fine. But eventually the people in your backyard can only do them so many times before it's time to move on to those other people. And I've actually had people, I'm assuming you have as well, reach out to you and say, I'd love to be on your show, or I know someone who would make a great guest for your show, and they are in Bulgaria, this is what they do. Oh, we think they're a great fit for you, or you've somehow connected with it. The networking, the business, the synergy, all of those things that just don't happen when you're staying in your own silo, as it were. So I also think that we're speaking of the duration, I think one of the things that we're still handcuffed to is again conventional media. We're handcuffed to the 730 news, always goes at 7:30. So we have to have 30 minutes of programming. Television programs that are either 30 minutes or an hour, but we're even seeing a shift in that with some you know 15 minute shorts on television, uh, more in the Netflix or streaming zone or on-demand zone. But we're also seeing in the podcasting space people doing short five-minute, seven-minute episodes having massive impact and doing them more frequently because they're only doing seven-minute episodes. So I don't know what the magic pill or bullet is going to be if we're going to come to a podcast have to be at least this long. You must remember a few years back when YouTube was give us all your long-form content, give us all your long-form content. Then it became oh, wait a minute. You know what? There's this thing called TikTok. We love your long-form content, but please give us your short form content. We'll give it more love. So I think that's the confusion in the marketplace for us as podcasters because of that. I think eventually we'll figure it out for ourselves. And the other thing that I think will happen, and and to tell me what your thoughts are about this, is almost like a minimum standard for quality. I think we're starting to see it now. Apple, I know, has if you want to do bonus content or their premium platform, you have to be at a certain quality content. It has to be a wave and it has to have a certain decibels, like it has to be at a certain kilohertz. I think we're still see more of that because I think audiences want, they want to be engaged, they want to be entertained, but they still want quality.

Community Gardens And Where To Find Lance

Lance 26:26

Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's what I was getting at, or maybe I was missing, is like, I want us to be a sort of a bellwether against the TikTokification of everybody's brains. Like it kind of drove me nuts as a long form content creator outside of the podcast. So I also am a professional fisherman and I have a YouTube channel that's called Fishing with Lance. And I think we produce really cool videos. Every time it's a story, right? So like I'll go on these very long hikes up into the Colorado Mountains. I will show people, like, I'm look, I'm waking up, getting the coffee, going out the door. Here's the plan today, here's what our goal is. And it's just a you know, it's a literally there's a story arc, the whole thing. And then TikTok came along, and I'm like, come on, like this is better for humanity, the longer story. I'm taking you on a journey with me. Look at it, I took you to the mountains. Maybe you can't go to the mountains because you're, you know, sick or something like that. But you can watch me on YouTube and I'm helping you be happier. And then, like, nope, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. So that's what I hope we are, is we're just sort of this our own sort of standard. It can be an organic standard against that, and we let the market kind of decide because I think you're right. People, people want that kind of content, and it is higher quality content. Oh, 100%, 100%.

Carl 27:40

Oh my goodness, Lance, it's been a great conversation. I think we've barely scratched the scratch. I think there's a there's a reason to have another conversation down the line. One of the things we didn't get a chance to talk about too much was Longmont Gardens. I know it's one of your passion projects. Tell us a little bit about that and then tell us where where people can find the podcast itself. So tell us about Longmont Gardens.

Lance 28:00

Yeah, when I moved to Colorado back in 2008, I lived in an apartment, I couldn't afford anything besides an apartment. But I grew up, as I said, between a cattle ranch and a sugar beet farm. And then therefore, we raised and grew a lot of our own food. So I really, I really wanted that back, especially for my young family and everything. So I looked up Community Garden Longmont, found one, joined, and then became the garden leader in a like year two or three. Eventually, the parent nonprofit was uh, which was Growing Gardens, who was growing all of these community gardens throughout my community in Boulder County, said, Hey, we're too big and we actually want to give local control back, and we're giving the garden leaders the first opportunity for that. And I said, Yes, like yes, I would I've always wanted my own nonprofit. Like if you're an entrepreneur with a heart, this is part of the deal. The part of the deal is like I borrowed from society to build up what I've done, and now it's my turn to give back. So in 2020, I turned it into my own nonprofit, Longmont Community Gardens. We got a big federal grant last year for $86,000, which allowed us to double the size of the gardens. I'm really proud of it. You can learn all about it at Longmont Community Gardens.org. That's my passion project. Like I get more joy out of doing that stuff than almost anything. And if people want to, you know, look into they want to connect with me on LinkedIn, they can go to LinkedIn and they can go just type in Lance Cayko, L-A-N-C-E last name, C-A-Y-K-O. I'm the only one I will accept.

Carl 29:20

And we'll make sure those links are in the podcast show notes rather. And then we, of course, we have Inside the Firm. That's the Monday show.

Lance 29:27

That's both of them, actually. Yep, insidethe firm podcast.com. You can find us. All the links are there for wherever you want to watch it. Listen.

Law Of Polarity And Closing

Carl 29:34

And we'll make sure those links uh land in the show notes as well. And also the link to Longmont Community Gardens as well, if you want to check out some of the work that they're doing. Oh my goodness, Lance, before I turn you loose to uh either record another podcast episode or work on your passion project, I'll give you the final thought, my friend.

Lance 29:51

I want everybody to keep the mindset of the law of polarity. And if you don't know what that is, you should, after the after this, you should just Google what it is. It's 100% a universal law that is based on physics, but it affects your life every single day. Bad things are going to happen. Those are the negative things. And if the bad things happen first, in order for the universe to balance out, the good things have to come afterwards. So if the bad things are happening to you right now, keep the faith. The good stuff is coming.

Carl 30:16

I love it. That's a great way to end it. And Lance, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you today. Lance Cayko, thank you so much for being my guest. Thanks for having me on the show today, Carl. Appreciate you, buddy. And hey, thank you for being a part of the show today. So glad you could join us. Believe it or not, I can't work this magic by myself. So thanks to my amazing team, our audio engineer Dom Carillo, our Sonic Branding genius Kenton Dobrowolski, and the person who worked the arms. All of our arms actually, our project manager and my trusty assistant, Julovell Tiongco, known to appear simply as July. If you like what you heard today, let us know. You can leave us a comment or review or just a voice note. And if you really liked it, we hope you'll share it with your friends and your colleagues. If you don't like what you heard today, well, please feel free to share with your enemies. And if you know someone who would make a great guest on the show, let us know about it. You can get in touch with us by going to our show notes where all of our connection points are there, including the link to our website, LinkedIn, and Facebook as well. And if you're ready to be a guest on podcasting, or even start your own show, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space and rock it. Because after all, we're Podcast Solutions made simple. Catch again next time.