Tim Austin on Building Community One Festival at a Time

0:00The following programming is sponsored by Marc J. Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management, or Beasley Media Group. Entrepreneur, founder, author, and financial advisor, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality. At March Forward, Marc and his partners and associates think out of the box to partner with their clients in regards to their visions for their lives, their businesses, and their legacies. And through his innovative work with the Forward Focus Forums, Mark connects entrepreneurs to resources that help to fuel their success.

0:35Founders Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, reveal the stories behind their successes, and the lessons they've learned. Join Mark and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a bit of fun. Now, let's dive in. Good morning, America. How are you? I'm in the studio here with Tim. Good morning, Tim. Good morning. And, you know, I always want to comment a little bit. This is July of 2026. Who knows when you'll be listening to it, but there's been smoke all around the country, a lot, many parts of the country, and it feels like difficult times, a lot of political headwinds and all that kind of stuff.

1:17So when I say, how are you, I mean, how are you? I hope you're doing well, and I hope you're keeping your head above water with everything that's going on. And what's on my mind is my wife and I yesterday moved our home of 26 years. And it's the longest I think I've lived in a place and then moved. So, of course, we accumulated a ton of stuff, way more than we need. It's just I've been thinking about the experience of moving. And it's exhilarating and exciting in some respects. And it's also stressful. And it brings a lot of questions about and things like that. But so that was kind of my experience.

1:56So I've been an observer of what a move is about. Tim, you're a guy who's moved a bit in your life. So what's your experience with moving? Yes, so I moved away from Lancaster to go to school and studied out of state for several years and then worked out of state on the East Coast. And then finally, I guess in my 20s, I went off to get a master's in Milan, Italy. and lived there for almost four years. Came back in 2020 when the world was just about ready to shut down, and I've been back since. So what was that all like for you? What was it like to move to Italy, first of all, and then to move back during a world catastrophe?

2:41Well, the move there was really exciting. I was able to do a summer language program, sort of tune up my Italian, and then I enrolled at the Politecnico di Milano in an Italian language design program. And I had a blast. It's a fantastic program. And my classmates were really top of their game. So I had a great time, but ultimately decided to come back, both for family reasons and for business reasons, it made sense. So I bought a one-way ticket back in February of 2020, not knowing that that was going to coincide with a worldwide pandemic. but I was able to make it back just in the nick of time about a week and a half before the whole world shut down.

3:24So that move was actually kind of a relief for you, I would think, in a way. Well, I was really lucky because my parents, you know, have a farm down in Conestoga, Pennsylvania, in the River Hills, and we just, as a family, kind of hunkered down and had a, you know, had actually really a good time, a good summer, together and a lot of quality family time. So I was happy to be back with them. And then it gave me, like many people, it gave us time to reset and for me to launch my business, CoLab, here in the US. So Tim Austin, AIA, welcome to the show, is an architect and founder of CoLab XYZ and also co-founder of Lancaster Capital Day, which we're going to spend some time talking about.

4:19It's really an interesting thing. And let me remind our listeners that this is part of a series we're doing. We're doing several special series. One is the first one I started was about Lancaster PA because it's an hour and a half from where I grew up. I went there as a kid and I thought of it as a nice quaint town of Amish people and Dutch wonderland and the host farm. You know, that's what I knew of Lancaster. And it's really, today at least, very different from that. It's a very, I would call it a progressive city, a lot of culture, a lot of arts going on, a lot of events, which we're going to be talking about, and very energetic, you know, is what I've noticed about it.

5:00And of course, I got introduced quickly by my friend Ray Lowe, who's the luckiest guy in the world who retired to willow valley and also and then immediately after that deb brandt who was founder of fig who we found each other by accident and she came on the show and when i saw fig magazine i'm like i gotta go to lancaster and see what's going on there and it was and in fact tim and i met at the fig emerald anniversary party right so um and um this year together with non-profit municipal leaders he's launching the downtown street festival as i mentioned called lancaster Capital Day. So let's start with your story.

5:40So you studied as an architect. We've talked about that. Went to Cornell. They studied in Milan, came back. And what happened? Well, first of all, to me, you're an ultimate entrepreneur. You started these festivals that you do from scratch. You started your company from scratch. And I think some of that's in your family to a certain extent. So tell us a bit about your family enough to understand where you might've gotten some of your entrepreneurial streak from?

6:10Well, yeah, my family's been in business. My grandfather served in World War II and came back and worked for Armstrong, which was the big company in Lancaster, PA. It was sort of the Fortune 500 company, and he went through their training program. Still is to a certain extent, right? It still is after a couple of bankruptcies. But no, really, really great company and brought a lot of good people to Lancaster County, my grandfather and grandmother being two of them. And they raised their family. My father grew up in Lancaster and ultimately joined this business that was an offshoot from Armstrong.

6:52So definitely grew up in a family that talked about business and economics and it was always an interest of mine to someday start a business. I think architects by nature are often entrepreneurial because we have these design studios and at some point we have to learn how to run them. So that's where I've ended up. And when I met you at the FIG event, you were representing the Log Cabin, which is another family business, right? Well, yeah, at some point, yes. At some point, my family got into the restaurant business as well. My father bought the Log Cabin restaurant at auction in 2009, and I'm not sure he knew what he was getting into, but it's become quite a project for us, and it's been a fun way to collaborate with my father in the last few years.

7:46I hear that's a very popular restaurant. It's in Liditz, by the way, right? Yeah, just between Liditz and Ephrata, technically in Leola, and a real cool historic restaurant that was built in the 1920s as a speakeasy and serving alcohol in the woods. But in 1933, when they repealed Prohibition, it became an official restaurant, and it has been operational pretty much ever since. There have been three ownership families. The last owner, Charlie DeSantis, was this Italian-American guy, really dynamic. He had it for 50 years and built it into sort of the fine dining restaurant of Lancaster County.

8:29And it's been our family's goal to maintain and restore that tradition and keep this special place. Lancaster has a lot of heritage tourism, and so we fit right into that. People who are looking for a good meal who also want to learn a little bit about our history can do that at the log cabin. I've been told I need to get to eat there one of these days. Absolutely, yes. So you have that. And then from coming back from Italy where you had done some architectural work, you create a CoLab XYZ. Let's just talk about that for a minute. And then I know you're really anxious to talk about the festival.

9:07Yeah, sure. So we'll do that. Yeah, so I have an architecture design firm called CoLab. We're based right in downtown Leditz. and it was really important to me to build a team. In my school, university, I had worked with teams. I really enjoyed the collaborative environment and it's really the best way to get something designed to bounce ideas around. Hence the name CoLab. CoLab, yeah. Collaboration is certainly an inspiration for us. It's also the idea of a laboratory. So a laboratory is experimental in nature and that's a piece of what we do. So I was able to recruit some really talented designers on my team.

9:52I have a small team, but there are four of us in Liditz and actually two Italians who are based in Milan. And you collaborate with the Italians to a certain extent as well. Oh, yeah. We work directly with our Italian coworkers and they bring really a nice perspective to the team. they live and breathe design every day. There's probably no more beautiful country in the world than Italy, and Milan has become the design capital of the world. So when there are big events like Milan Design Week, our teammates are in it. They're out there. They're doing events, and they bring that inspiration back to our team.

10:34So we have the luxury of living in this cool small town in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but we feel very plugged in with the design world. Who do you design for? What kind of buildings? Well, so I'm actually the only architect on my team. So I've continued to do some architectural work at the Log Cabin and local to Lititz. But really, we've moved into branding. We're like graphic design. Largely, yeah. We have a strong graphic design. We recently collaborated with local business in Lidditz to do a mural on one of the walls in downtown Lidditz. So our team has a real graphic design competency, and now we have a web designer marketing person.

11:28So we work at different levels, but largely to make things visible. We build a brand around businesses. By the way, Liditz has a lot going on too besides Rock Liditz among other things. Yes, absolutely. And that could be a good segue to the next part of this conversation. So Liditz is quite a cool little town and originally founded by the Moravian community that had come to Pennsylvania for religious freedom. And they set up in Bethlehem, PA, and then their second community was Littitz. And I think from 1756 until the mid-1800s, it was a closed Moravian town. But it has since opened. It is a vibrant community with a lot of interesting people.

12:23And at some point along the way, a couple entrepreneurs who actually you might enjoy talking to launched these businesses focused on the performing arts. And the two big ones are Tate, which does staging, and Clare Brothers, which does sound. Well, I came from the music business. I knew Clare Brothers forever. So you know the Clare's, yeah. And they had these businesses. They started collaborating with the top artists in the world, traveling the world. And they have since built this entire campus dedicated to live performances. We call it Rock Lit. It's actually just maybe a mile up the road from downtown Littitz.

13:03It's something that attracted me to the town. I saw the creativity happening there. There's this idea of innovation hubs, and clearly Littitz has become one. It sort of justified my move back to Littitz because I wanted to stay creative, and I wanted to live in a small town, and that can be hard to do. By the way, we had Josh Funk on the show too. Okay. He does all the catering. He has the Annie's. Annie Bailey's. Annie Bailey's, the Irish bar, but he does all the catering. And now in Philadelphia, he does the big rock events and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, they do a great job. So, yeah, I mean, it was definitely an inspiration to see what they've done, what they continue to do.

13:52And I've learned a lot from them. and looking for opportunities to collaborate. Which leads us to work. We have a break coming up, but maybe just in 30 seconds, talk about what came out of that, the festival that came out of that. Yeah, sure. So in 2022, I was new in town, but we had started doing these potluck dinners with the Italians and sort of Italophiles, let's say, people who were interested in speaking Italian. Which you are, you're an Italian. Something like that. Yeah, I'm not sort of ethnically Italian, but I lived there long enough that, yeah. That's why you're an Italian file, right?

14:31You're not Italian, but you're Italian. Yeah, yeah. So I was looking to speak. I am too. I married. I used to date them. I married one. It's a slippery slope. Yeah, it is. So yeah, we had been getting together, and in 2022, we turned that little potluck into a festival. So the rest is history. So it's time to take a commercial break, and we'll be right back, and we're going to hear more about this on Founders Forum.

15:20SI's members-only meetings and private CEO conferences give members the opportunity to hear from world-class thought leaders on crucial topics like AI, education, corporate philanthropy, and more. In addition, CEO members get the opportunity to share ideas and experience with their peers, like-minded CEOs who believe in the importance of giving back to the community and who understand the benefits companies get from embracing corporate social responsibility. The Sattel Institute charges no dues or fees. In order to join, member companies simply make a long-term commitment to the nonprofit of their choice.

15:55To find out more about membership and why so many leading companies are now part of the Sattel Institute, visit the organization's website at SattelInstitute.org. Sattel, S-A-T-E-L-L, Institute.org. As Ed Sattel says, think we, not just me. We are back on Founders Forum with our guest Tim Austin. Tim, welcome back again. And we're just starting to talk about the Italian, La Italia, as I understand is the name of the festival. So it started in 2022. I think it was not expected to be a real big deal at first, right? No, not at all. So we had been gathering this sort of group of Italians and Italian speakers on a monthly basis for basically a potluck dinner.

16:44And it had grown. We had maybe 30 or 40 people in our network. And so in 2022, we had this idea that we would get together in late summer and have a large picnic, which we would invite all of our family and friends to. By the way, you're doing this along with Justina, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. So who's been a guest on the show, who also is an Italianophile, I believe. Justina is great. And yeah, she, you know, she like me, you know, comes from the U.S. but has been able to collaborate with Italians. Yeah, she imports Italian wine, by the way, and has a business called Vinbar. Yes, they do a great job downtown Lancaster.

17:28So this sort of group of people, hodgepodge of people, culturally speaking, we're a real mix, but interested in sharing Italian culture and celebrating Italian culture. So we booked just sort of a portion of Lidditz Springs Park, which is a real beautiful park in downtown Lidditz. And we thought we would do this picnic, but one thing led to another. one of our members posted it online and sort of called it the Italian Festival of Lititz. Well, that got some traction. And before we knew it, we had something like 2 ,000 RSVPs on Facebook. So we sort of scrambled and in just a couple of weeks, we planned what became the first annual Litalia Festival.

18:21But we were talking earlier about the real strong business community in Lidditz that's focused on the performing arts. And we really benefited from that. We were able to sit down with some of the other leaders in the community from the park and also from Venture Lidditz. And they basically laid out their template for running a great event. And they worked with a lot of vendors from Rock Lidditz. And so in just a couple of weeks, we were able to bring in staging and quality sound. It's really amazing because it's a small town-ish. Oh, definitely. It's a small town. Almost central Pennsylvania. Yeah, we've got 5 ,000 residents.

19:02So we're not huge. But you have all these resources right around you to do that. Absolutely. And it really, I mean, it's everything. It's not just sound. It's your trash and porta-potties. So we just followed that template, and it helped to have a stunningly beautiful park with stunningly beautiful weather. but a lot of people showed up we had about 3 000 people at our at our picnic and um and that's when we realized we we had more than a picnic on our hands we had a real festival and uh the vendors we had invited some vendors uh to that first year and all of them had a fantastic day they made a lot of money and they came to us and they said well you know what's the date next year when when can we come back and and uh so we got real serious about it we uh we were able to book the entire park.

19:52We really expanded the footprint. We extended to two stages and added a lot of other programmatic elements, including a plein air art competition, an expanded kid zone, a car show. So really since 2023 onward, we've been running this festival. We're going into our fifth year and we're expecting upwards of 20 ,000 people. It's one day or is it the weekend? It's actually Just one day, yes, Saturday, September 19th, this year, 2026. And it's going to be, we're in Lidditz again, but we are moving location from the Lidditz Springs Park up to East Main Street. So downtown? Right downtown. So it's a real opportunity.

20:40In the streets. The streets will be blocked off. Yep, so we're blocking a portion of East Main Street. and we've been able to rent some green space at Linden Hall, the Lidditz Moravian Church, and Lidditz Historical Foundation. So we're kind of piecing together a really nice festival map. How many people would you expect this year? I think you could easily top 20 ,000. It's very weather dependent. You learn as you plan free outdoor festivals. Obviously people are coming from all over to come to this. Yes, they are. They are. They're coming down from upstate. Upstate, they're coming in from New Jersey and Delaware and New York.

21:19We have performers now who are well-known in the States and also coming from Italy, and that has been able to attract a wider audience. Amazing. That's really incredible. So let's talk about Lancaster Capital Day because that's evolved out of this. Yeah. So it seems like every year we add something, and we added an Italian gala, fundraising gala. We added a concert. There are all these elements. Our team, it's a young team. It's very innovative. Anyway, coming out of the success of last year, we were talking about some opportunities and one of them was to actually put this knowledge we have to use and actually launch another festival.

22:07So we linked up with a lot of local leaders in Lancaster City, including Deb Brandt from FIG. She was able to bring together a really nice team, including the city of Lancaster. She's very connected there, for sure. Yeah, it helps to piggyback off that network. So we got talking December of last year about the possibility. Obviously, there's a lot of excitement around America 250, and we thought it might make sense to explore those themes on our own turf and to look at Lancaster's own history and our role in the Revolutionary War and sort of all the things about Lancaster. Which was significant, I know.

22:49It was a pretty significant role. Yeah, I mean at the time, so I'm not – It was almost the first capital of the country. It could have been. Yeah, there was a viable case for that. So at the time of the independence movement, Lancaster was actually the largest inland city in the colonies. So we were designated a royal market town and we still have central markets. So that legacy has really carried forward. But we were an obvious choice when Congress was chased out of town by the Brits. They chose Lancaster as their first stop. Now, it wasn't particularly safe. Out of Philly, you're saying? Yes, they had to escape Philadelphia.

23:39So they met in Lancaster for one day. It was September 27, 1777. And they convened a session of Congress in the first courthouse, which was right on the square in Lancaster City. Now, it was a short-lived experiment. they during that session of congress they voted to continue moving west across the susquehanna river and then they set up shop for several months in york which is our sister city um so it's sort of a funny little historical anecdote but it's something we're quite proud of it actually was a capital the united states for a day or so yeah yeah yeah i mean the de facto capital right um but it played an important role and at the time you know in you see in in early writings even George Washington, who wrote a letter to Congress that was read that day by John Hancock, he asked the people of Lancaster for blankets and shoes for the war effort.

24:36So even then, we were recognized as a community that made things. And we were recognized as a really welcoming community as well. And when you talk to the city of Lancaster about their priorities or their marketing points, they actually use some of the same language. We're still industrious. We're still welcoming. I've heard a lot of that. It's true. It's nice to see that there's that through line in all these years. When is Lancaster Capital Day? So this year, we are planning the festival for Saturday, September 26th. The week after your other festival, right? Oh, yeah. Interesting. It's a double header.

25:19So there's some economies of scale in that. Maybe I should plan a trip and just stay for the weekend. Oh, absolutely. Yes. We have actually some of our Italian friends coming to town and then staying to help out with the second festival as well. Well, I say I'm Italian by reverse injections. Anyway. Yeah, so it should be a good time. I think both festivals will be a lot of fun. You know, so what we, you know, what we developed for the Italia Fest, a community festival that celebrated Italian culture. We're largely doing the same thing with Lancaster Capital Day, but our focus is on local Lancaster culture.

25:55Well, if you're listening to the show, look for that because it's pretty exciting things. It's so many great things happening around America 250, and this is one of them. We don't have much time left. I have a couple closing questions for you. One is, what is one of the best ideas you've ever had? Oh, gosh. I should have prepared for this. We may just have talked about a couple. Yeah. I don't know. I think maybe by accident, the choice to come back to Lackister has turned out to be a really important one in my life. It's led to all sorts of cool things, reconnecting with my family and connecting with a community that likes to build things.

26:41Accidental ideas are good, too. They count. what book are you currently reading Tim? Oh gosh I know you're a reader I have a couple books I tend to read multiple books simultaneously I do the same thing yeah so I think the one I'm most excited about is Flatland the sort of funny geometric meditation on space anyway it's quite funny and yeah so it's sort of let's say in the tradition of absurdist literature like Alice in Wonderland okay and an old book? Older book yeah written during the Victorian era and it's sort of a commentary on well check out Flatland because we're out of time. Tim thanks so much for being here.

27:36Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week on Founders Forum Founders Forum was brought to you in part by March Forward, LLC. We partner with entrepreneurs like you to assist in accomplishing your future vision, your life, your business, your legacy. Comprehensive wealth planning that starts with you, not a product. We hope you enjoyed your time with Founders Forum and that you found something of value to take with you throughout your day. Join us again next week for another episode of Founders Forum on WWDB 860 AM Philadelphia or on your favorite podcast streaming service. Securities offered through DFBG Investments, LLC.

28:15DFBG. Investment advisory services offered through Diversify Advisory Services, LLC. Diversify. DAS and DFBG are affiliated entities. March is unaffiliated with DAS and DFBG. Members FINRA slash SIPC. The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be interpreted as investment advice. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of Diversify or DFBG.