My 1st Gig: Ed Collazo on Hustle, Integrity, and Building Something That Lasts

From a muck farm at 13 to a beloved Grand Rapids brewery, City Built’s Ed Collazo shares how early lessons in work ethic, accountability, and relationships shaped the way he leads today. 

If you’ve spent any time around Grand Rapids’ food and beverage scene, you’ve probably felt the gravitational pull of City Built Brewing—part neighborhood hangout, part lab for creativity, and fully committed to community. In this episode of My 1st Gig, hosts Ryan Gajewski and Allie Walker sit down at City Built with owner Ed Collazo to trace the winding path that led him here—and the choices (and hard lessons) that keep him grounded. 

Like many of our guests, Ed’s first gig wasn’t glamorous. At 13, he was up before sunrise, riding his bike six miles to a muck farm to pull weeds for $3.85 an hour. The work was humbling—and formative. “I don’t think anyone works harder than me,” he says now, crediting family role models and those early mornings for a deep, blue-collar ethic he still carries. 

“Choose sooner”—and own your choices 

Ed’s career wasn’t a straight line. He washed dishes at a downtown diner, earned education degrees, taught in a charter school and a prison, worked in building products, then spent seven years at Northwestern Mutual. Along the way, he made mistakes—like delaying a certification and trying to talk his way around it—which cost him a teaching job and, more importantly, forced a reckoning with integrity. 

His advice to his younger self? “Choose sooner.” Not because your first pick locks you in forever, but because taking ownership—of a direction, and of your decisions—creates accountability. For Ed, that commitment later became non-negotiable: handling clients’ finances demanded he be “above reproach,” a standard he carried into entrepreneurship. 

Different on purpose

When a chance to help launch City Built appeared, Ed didn’t initially plan to stay. But he raised the capital, recognized misalignment on the original operating plan, made hard calls, and eventually assumed leadership. From there, he set a simple strategy: be different—on purpose. 

In a market dense with good beer, City Built would differentiate through relationships, responsiveness, and experimentation. The team leaned into innovation (think QR-code ordering experiments and nimble pivots during COVID) and focused on being the small, local partner that shows up—for customers, for venues, for the community. That mindset opened doors, like landing taps at Frederik Meijer Gardens—proof that in West Michigan, kindness and consistency compound.

Highest and best use (and mops still matter) 

If you’ve seen Ed behind the bar or pushing a mop, that’s not just “servant leadership” optics. It’s operational R&D. He learns the job so he can resource it better—then gets back to his highest and best use: relationships and growth. Today, he’s thinking about the right partnerships (including with new venues) and the right ownership model (he recently acquired a former partner’s shares with the intention of selling them to Latino investors, moving City Built toward majority Latino ownership). The throughline is legacy—building something durable his kids can choose to join or sell when they’re ready. 

Lessons you can use tomorrow 

Lead with integrity—even when it costs you. Shortcuts feel efficient until they aren’t. Ed’s early stumble reset his bar for trust and transparency, and it’s paid dividends since. 

Be relentlessly curious about the work. Whether it’s dish pits or draft lists, understand the job before you optimize it. Respect is built in the trenches. 

Relationships move mountains here. In West Michigan, being good and being good to work with is the winning combo. Show up, follow through, and let people talk about your consistency when you’re not in the room. 

Pick a lane (for now). “Choose sooner” doesn’t mean “choose forever.” It means commit, learn faster, and be accountable for what you said you’d do. 

Ed calls himself a B-minus who works harder than anyone. We’d quibble with the grade. What we heard is a builder—of habits, of trust, and of a business that feels like home. 

🎧 Listen to the full conversation on My 1st Gig to hear Ed’s stories—from mopeds and dish pits to hard conversations and the steady cadence of doing the next right thing.