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Where did that come from?

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How'd you start that?

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Yeah.

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Well, I tell you what, sort of hearkening back again to North Dakota here is, uh,

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so I'm 41 years old, uh, today.

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And my, my journey started when I was 13.

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I grew up, uh, lower middle-class, uh, poor to the point where like we got one

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pair of shoes per year money.

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My mom and dad's relationship with money was one of anxiety and, and not sort of

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embracing the fact that you w you got to make money, you got to make money if you

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want to live comfortably and, and remove yourself from that anxiety.

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Uh, so I tried farming with my dad one summer in Northwest North Dakota.

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I grew up in a cattle ranch and a farm and he and I didn't get along at that time.

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I just didn't particularly like the work.

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And I go, Hey, this isn't for me.

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And I go and he goes, well, you got to do something.

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And I wanted school clothes and all the other stuff.

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And I said, sure.

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I'm going to call your best friend, Bruce up.

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And his best friend was a general contractor.

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And I said, Hey, I will do, do you have any work?

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I'll do whatever it takes.

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And he says, yeah, you could be my gopher.

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And I go, great.

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What is that?

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And he goes, when you're, you go for this, you go for that.

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When you're done going for things, you get up on the roof and learn how to roof.

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We did 80 roofs that summer.

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It was brutal work.

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Uh, it was hard.

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It was sweaty.

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It was hot, but I just loved every single minute of it.

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And about halfway through the summer, Bruce told me a piece of, he gave me a piece of

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it, he just asked a question actually.

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And it was sort of changed my life, um, towards the trajectory of being a serial

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entrepreneur.

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And it was, he goes, how much money?

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He goes, I'm paying you $7 and 25 cents an hour.

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How much do you think I'm paying?

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Um, how much do you think I'm charging the clients for every hour you work?

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And I go 7.25 an hour and he laughed and I had no idea why he laughed.

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But then he explained, you know, how it's service-based business works that you, you

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know, if you, if you're paying your, your employees $10 an hour, you're usually

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charging them out two or three times that amount.

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He explained why with the profits, uh, it costs a business, all the other good stuff

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that maybe just like a young person doesn't really know until somebody finally tells him.

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And then I, then I saw Bruce's relationship with money and he had no anxiety about it.

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He was not rich and he was not this, and he's still not, and he's not this guy who

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goes, has all these possessions or anything, but he just didn't have a, he didn't walk

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around all day with, with his burden of, of money hanging over his head because he

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didn't have it.

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Um, one of my favorite rappers of all time, Kanye West, he, he, you know, one of his

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songs, he says, having money is and everything not having it is.

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So all of that just sort of formulated and like, Oh, I'm going to be a builder.

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Like Bruce, I actually started out being a builder first.

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And once I went to tech school, uh, for two years to become a general contractor.

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And I got up, I got about, I almost, you know, in our senior capstone year, I won't,

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as we were finishing, I got to looking at these blueprints.

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We, we, we built a house for a capstone and I was looking at them and I went, man,

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like, why did the architects draw it that way?

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And then I started thinking, oh yeah, the architecture and the drawings are going to

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come before the building, obviously.

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How interesting would it be?

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I was like, I love school.

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I figured out for the first time in my life, I love school.

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I am, I figured out how to monetize going to school with all the different kinds of

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scholarships and stuff like that.

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And I was, and I had no children.

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I had nothing.

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I was like, I didn't, what if I went to school and I didn't have any money?

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I was like, I didn't, what if I went to school 70 miles north to be an architect too?

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How interesting would it be if I, if I'd be, if I got the architecture clients first

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and then I convinced them that I should build their buildings too.

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And I didn't even start thinking about real estate development until I got into

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architecture school, but that's, that was sort of the next step on my journey.

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Got to architecture school, same sort of thing.

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Loved it.

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Graduated the top of my class.

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And I was like, okay.

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I like, and then the ultimate just kind of final leap should be real estate

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development, like if I can make enough money as an architect and, and then, and,

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and then I can buy a piece of land.

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I know how to build it.

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I can make money three times, four or five, if you count, like holding onto the

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real estate developments and stuff like that.

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And the ultimate thing that it's allowed us to do at our architecture firm,

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F9 productions is when we wear all of those hats, we have so much more control

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over the quality of the project, the spaces, the design, the materials.

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We create better architecture.

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And that's my ultimate vision for other architects is to hear about our story on

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our show, Inside the Firm podcast, or this interview today with you, Peyton,

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and be inspired to start taking on more responsibility and take back

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that master builder role.