“I knew I wanted to be somebody,” said the 47-year-old business owner and entrepreneur. “I chose Washington for the opportunities that it could afford me.”

So, with just a few thousand dollars in his pocket, he relocated with his wife to the Pacific Northwest and bought some land, struggling to make a go of it in the construction industry.

“I started working for myself when I was 19,” said Lanning, “I built my first custom home when I was 20. From then on I’ve been self-employed.”

Lanning started in the construction industry when he was 15, doing carpentry for one of his teachers, and then working for a cabinet maker.

Today, Lanning owns or co-owns not one, but five businesses, from Homeland Construction, which he started 28 years ago, to his latest venture, Studio Snaidero in Seattle, which opened for business just a few weeks ago. Four of those businesses are construction-related.

Homeland Construction started as a custom home construction company, but in the last few years Lanning’s been branching out.

“The last four years we’ve done almost nothing but our own stuff,” said Lanning. Homeland builds spec homes, condos and mixed use developments. One of its latest projects is two new commercial buildings in downtown Kingston, the first such construction in the area in decades.

Two of Lanning’s other local businesses (he also co-owns a home weatherizing company in Nevada, run by his brother) have grown from needs his own construction company had.

“We’ve always been hard surface guys,” said Lanning of Homeland Construction. The company would frequently build all cabinets for projects, as well as lay tile and install granite slabs. There was so much demand for the granite slabs that Lanning started fabricating them in his garage.

The volume of granite fabrication work soon outgrew that space, as well as the wearing out his wife’s patience, so Lanning, along with business partner Greg Moga, started Sound Stoneworks in 2000. Sound Stoneworks is headquartered in Kingston and provides granite slabs to both contractors and homeowners. But the company doesn’t just do countertops.

“We’re carpenters,” he said. “We make all kinds of stuff out of granite.”

To date Sound Stoneworks has been one of Lanning’s most successful ventures.

“We make granite jobs easy for people,” he said, “and we’re swamped.”

Lanning’s latest business venture, Studio Snaidero, a franchise showroom that sells the high-end Italian cabinetry brand Snaidero, originally stemmed from a desire to have a business that would supplement Sound Stoneworks. But in the few short weeks since the franchise location has been opened, it appears as if the opposite may end up being true.

“Architectural Digest hosted the grand opening,” said Lanning. “We had $140,000 worth of product placement for that showroom.”

While it’s too soon to tell if the store will be a long-term success, there certainly isn’t much competition in the area. The next closest Snaidero location that would serve the Seattle area is in San Francisco.

“There’s one in Vancouver, BC, but they don’t come over here,” said Lanning. “We’re pretty much it in the Northwest. It’s probably going to end up overshadowing [the other businesses].”

Most entrepreneurs would be satisfied with one successful business venture — or at least satisfied with one at a time. So what is it, exactly, that drives Lanning to take on so much?

In part, it’s a desire never to return to the poverty that he knew when he was starting out. But there’s more to it than that.

“There’s no such thing as retiring for me,” he said. “I love this stuff. I love construction. One gig’s not enough. When I [start a new project,] I can’t wait to play this game that I know how to play.”.