Leadership Team

Lucas Michael Payne

Lucas Michael Payne is a business owner, real estate investor, and entrepreneur. He is the President and co-Founder of Force Energy Group and Force Global Supply. For the last 20 years he has focused on green building, energy efficiency, and new construction projects for schools and commercial real estate developments around the country.

During the early months of the pandemic, he utilized his knowledge of the global supply chain and founded Force Medical Supply. Force aided government agencies to obtain the necessary masks, gloves, and medical supplies. While his intention was to “just keep the team working”, Force Global posted over $21 million in sales in 2020 and was able to donate millions of masks and critical PPE to underserved communities in the US and around the globe.

To date he and his team at Force have completed over 2,000 projects in 44 states for clients such as NAI Hiffman, Chicago Public Schools, and Jones Lange Lassalle. Lucas previously served as V.P of Sales at Verde Solutions. Lucas led Verde to explosive growth resulting in being listed as one of Inc. 500's fastest growing businesses in 2017. Prior to his work with Verde, in 2011 Lucas founded ACES (Advanced Custom Energy Solutions) that was eventually purchased by a publicly traded company Trans-Lux (TNLX).

Lucas’ entrepreneurial journey has included cell phone stores, entertainment & concert promotion, and most recently he developed a mobile app HSTL.app to help entrepreneurs properly price their goods and services.

Lucas relocated from Chicago to Frisco Texas with his wife Marquita in 2019. They are both passionate about serving youth and young adults through various ministries and organizations. They founded Kenzo’s Well (named for their son Kenzo) in June of 2022 whose mission is to provide clean drinking water in Africa and commissioned the first well in Ghana.

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Dan Rose

Dan’s more than 16 year career in real estate and finance brings experience on projects that cover a wide spectrum of the real estate industry. After graduating from Wake Forest University in 2005, he took a position with Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in their real estate lending division in London, England. At RBS, he participated in 3 different groups: as a credit analyst in the credit department, as a relationship manager on the lending team, and as an analyst on the strategic property finance team overseeing the large transaction approval process within the bank. In 2006, Dan returned to Illinois to work on the finance team with Mid-American Development Partners (Midco), a middle market regional real estate development firm with a focus on retail. While at Midco, Dan oversaw more than $500 million dollars in real estate finance consisting of debt, mezzanine, and equity sources. He reported directly to the CFO of the company, and by the time he left, was in charge of retail deal feasibility. His main area of focus was retail, although the company was also in many hotel and mixed-use developments, where Dan assisted when necessary at the request of the CFO.

Since joining LFI, Dan has been an integral part of both the leasing team as well as the finance team but is a principal now and the director of retail development. is the primary LFI contact for many of the national retailers/clients in addition to brokers in the Chicago marketplace. On new projects, his underwriting expertise is used for feasibility analysis. Dan continues to take an active role in the day-to-day management of projects. Dan has served as a special project manager for politically sensitive developments. In 2016, Dan founded LFI Energy, a mineral rights royalty company that owns a minority share of an operating mineral rights royalty company in Denver Colorado. He currently sits on the board of Petram LLC to help steer the direction of that investment. Dan is a core member of the LFI team on corporate strategy and is critical in developing the direction of the overall business.

A History of Global Sourcing & Thinking- Outside the Box

CEO Lucas Michael Payne began sourcing products from overseas in the late 1990s. While working as a operations manager at Wireless Depot (a chain of 11 cell phone shops) in the Chicago area. The company was facing cash flow problems around the cost of cell phones and keeping enough stock as they were waiting for the payouts from previous activations. The cellular phone companies had set pricing to dealers that was tiered to benefit top performers but even then, didn’t leave much margin.

Lucas began researching how to buy phones more efficiently, refurbished phones, unlocked cellular phones (not specific to one network) and other ways to obtain phones directly from the manufacturers. Because of their deals with the cellular companies, they would not sell new phones to dealers, especially in small volume.

What companies like Nokia and other suppliers did allow is for dealers to purchase replacement parts for repairs. The 3300 model was one of the most popular models at the time and back then the phones were easy to open and fix. He soon realized that if he bought the phone in parts from the OEM or ODM manufactures in China (display screen, board, case, battery, charger, instruction manual and box) he could purchase the phone for about $30, instead of the $120 price from

T-Mobile.

Every Friday night after closing the stores he would have his managers meet him at the flagship store and put together phones. That competitive edge in price allowed them to offer the same phone that most dealers offered for $100 with a $50 rebate, for $50 with a $50 rebate!

Sales went through the roof and Wireless Depot eventually sold its stores in the Chicago area to US Cellular.

From Cell Phones to Hydrogen Fuel Cells to Energy Efficient Lighting

In 2010, Lucas was Director of Operations for a startup focused on hydrogen fuel cell technology. During that time LED technology for commercial applications was starting to make financial sense.

The energy savings from LED, a lower cost to purchase products, and the addition of cash incentives and rebates offered by utility companies to push business to upgrade their lighting all contributed to the explosive growth of the LED industry.

Lucas formed Advanced Custom Energy Solutions (ACES) and began retrofitting commercial properties around the country with LED lilghting.

The problem was the manufacturers had many barriers to become a distributor. Rather than compete with the outdated distribution model, Lucas sought direct relationships the original manufacturers.

OEM and ODM Supplier Relationships

For over 20 years we have purchased directly from OEM’s (original equipment manufacturers) and ODM’s (original design manufacturers) in China, Mexico, and throughout the globe.

These original often produce the same products for multiple “manufacturers” under the private labels such as Leviton, Cree, Cooper, and Sylvania.

They also produce private label products for VAR’s (value added resellers) like Home Depot, Grainger, Lowes and any number of smaller companies and distributors.

Same Product, Same Specifications = Different Name

These private label products do not differ in material, safety rating, performance or warranty than the name brand competitors they are just priced significantly less because they don’t have the marketing dollars and overhead that those big companies do.

A good way to think about this is Costco’s Kirkland brand of products. The coffee is from Starbucks, the batteries are from Duracell, and the diapers are from Huggies. We don’t offer lower quality products, just white label or alternatively branded products, direct from the original manufacturer at a much lower price.