Episode 107 - From FOMO to Focus: How 75 Hard Transformed Our Lives
#107 | The 75 Hard Builders Group | From FOMO to Focus: How 75 Hard Transformed Our Lives
In this lively episode of The Curious Builder Podcast, host Mark Williams and a group of six builders from around the country chat about their experiences participating in the 75 Hard challenge. They dive into how this intense mental and physical program taught them about discipline, the power of community, and the lasting changes they've implemented in their lives, both professionally and personally. Along the way, they share funny stories, surprising insights, and the newfound habits they're carrying into the new year. Whether you're curious about 75 Hard or looking for a dose of motivation, this conversation offers plenty of inspiration and camaraderie among builders who are always pushing themselves to be better.
Listen to the full episode:
About The 75 Hard Builders Group
The 75 Hard Builders Group is a collective of builders, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals from across the country who came together with one goal: to push themselves beyond their comfort zones and commit to personal growth through the 75 Hard challenge. What started as a simple group text quickly turned into a tight-knit accountability circle rooted in discipline, intentionality, and showing up—not just in business, but in life.
Members of the group include:
Mark D. Williams – Host of The Curious Builder Podcast and owner of Mark D. Williams Custom Homes in Minnesota, who originally sparked the idea of doing 75 Hard as a group.
Kevin & Abbie Arnold – The husband-and-wife duo behind KA Builders in Columbus, Ohio, who tackled the challenge together and brought humor, consistency, and serious commitment.
Steve & Heather Tankersley – Co-owners of Tankersley Construction in Northern California, who not only completed the challenge as a couple but discovered the value of evening walks to connect and decompress.
Brad Robinson – Founder of Bradford Custom Homes & Remodeling in Atlanta, Georgia, who brought a ton of discipline, mindset growth, and hilarious group banter (plus a new appreciation for mocktails).
Mike Weaver – VP at Emser Tile, the only non-builder in the group, who brought a vendor perspective, serious grit, and unmatched accountability—even waking up at 2 a.m. to get workouts in during travel.
Morgan Molitor – Co-founder of Construction2Style in Minnesota, who joined the group while balancing entrepreneurship, motherhood, and faith-based reflection through the challenge.
Michael Gutelli – Co-founder of Clark and Aldine, a design and build company in Michigan! He played the role of behind-the-scenes motivator and mindset coach for the group.
Paul Crumrich – Founder of Donkey Label and Greenway Solar, who joined midway through and brought tons of energy (even if he was chugging his gallon of water at 9 p.m.).
Charlie Birtwhistle – A heavy lifter and consistent presence from day one, always showing up with grit, sweat, and a beanie.
While 75 Hard is a physically demanding challenge, the group quickly discovered that the mental transformation was even greater—reframing what it means to lead yourself well. From running companies and raising families to traveling non-stop or rebuilding routines from scratch, each person brought their own story, struggles, and wins to the table.
And even after the 75 days ended, the group kept going—still texting daily, still checking in, and still holding each other accountable. Because at the heart of it, this wasn’t just about fitness. It was about building a life—and a community—on purpose.
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Sam Teitt 00:04
we talked about that same thing a lot with our clients, of taking the time to solve the problems versus we can fix your problem by just making it really big, and then you'll figure out how to live within the space. Because if we try to do that on paper up front, it's going to take us a lot more time than time equals money and
00:19
but yeah, like, there's such better
Sam Teitt 00:21
ways to figure out how to solve the problems that we have in space without just making it excessively large.
Mark D. Williams 00:37
Today, on the podcast, we had Sam and Andrew teat from Bell point company out of Ohio, and we really dove deep on the family story and just the importance and intentionality that goes into building a home, and why. Really, Home Builders need to celebrate themselves and the work that they do. And it just really a very heartfelt episode. You're going to dive deep on really what makes these boys tick and really how their company is set up for not only this generation, but the next. So without further ado, here is Sam and Andrew. Welcome to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, the host today. I'm joined by the Bell point company. I've got Sam and Andrew teet out of Ohio. Is that right? Yes, Columbus, Columbus, Ohio, all right. Very good. Well, I got to meet you guys last fall. We had mutual pellet connection. Your pellet owner and my pellet owner knew each other, and so we got together in Minnesota. You guys were on your way, and fortunately, I couldn't join you. You guys were on a cool little pheasant hunting trip out to Sutton Bay, South Dakota. I assume you guys had a great time without me.
Sam Teitt 01:36
It was a blast. Yeah, it was a ton of fun. I've told those guys
Mark D. Williams 01:40
before, I've been out there a few times. What I love about that is it's a deeper experience, right? It's two days you really get to know the people you're traveling with, the brands you're working with. But one of the things that I like about companies that think like that is you're more interested in a relationship and making it deeper. And not every company can do that, or every relationship has the time to do that, but I've, I appreciate companies that are willing to sort of invest in their people, and Pell has done that with me, and I know they're doing it with you too. So it's, you know, shout out to them, sure. Yeah, sure. And Andrew, your vest, I was commenting before we went on. I thought that vest was a sudden Bay vest. And you were you got some pretty big temperature swings right now. What was it this morning? How much? What was the temperature out? And what is it
Andrew Teitt 02:23
trees at my house, and it's my truck said 74 so what 36 degree or 46 degrees? Whatever that is, math, yeah,
Mark D. Williams 02:33
I like a good vest. It pretty much anytime it's, you know, I don't know if you get, you don't get as quite as cold as it Minnesota, we went through about three weeks of minus 25 which is gold, but after that, anything above 10, it's like I don't even wear a jacket. So I wear vests from about February to Well, I don't even wear one today, so I guess only two months. But I pretty much don't wear jackets anymore. It's just vest. I have so many vests at this point. I like vests and boots. I have a lot of vests in boots. Yeah, let's introduce you guys to the audience. You guys are younger chaps. You guys are probably what, in your mid, late 30s.
Andrew Teitt 03:07
Yeah, mid 30s. For me, I just had a birthday, not a boy. Happy birthday. Yeah, my daughter and I have the same birthday. It's pretty unique. So you really, yeah, we got to celebrate together. She's She turned two. I turned 35 that's,
Mark D. Williams 03:18
oh, that's really cute. When they get a little bit older, my daughter is not. I have a nine, six and a five year old, but they're always obsessed with, like, will they catch you? I'm sure at two years old, she hasn't caught on to that yet, but it's kind of fun. When you have the same birthday, at some point, she'll be like, Hey, Dad, at what point am I going to catch you? And be like, yeah, you'll catch me when I'm
Sam Teitt 03:35
dead someday. Yeah, when I'm dead, I'm fine. Day
Mark D. Williams 03:39
41 okay, the when you guys were up here last fall, we talked a little bit about it, and it's all over your website. It's honestly what I want to talk about probably the most. There's so many I want to call Mom and Pop. But, you know, I love family. Run businesses, and I was part of one my my mom and dad were builders and designers. So many people follow the footsteps of their family, and sometimes it's atypical. Like, mine was pretty atypical. I actually knew I didn't want to do that. They retired, and then after they retired, I'm like, Oh, good, now I can become a builder. I don't have to have the mantle of, like, quote, taking over. You know, the company. I believe that's a whole nother episode. But what was kind of your journey, because was your Were your parents and was your family involved in building before you got into
Sam Teitt 04:19
it as well? No, not at all, not at all. Yeah, it's funny you say that about your family, because there's times where I'm like, dang, I wish I had some coattails that I could have, that I could have taken advantage of. But now we I went to, we both went to Ohio State. Both went to business school. I studied real estate finance, and kind of wanted, thought I wanted to go into real estate development, and so I started working with a really small outfit, doing a small residential project, and graduated. Took me five years. I did a victory lap at the end of it, but I ended up graduating from college in 2007 worked for that company, went into 2008 two. 1009 recession hit, that kind of all fell apart, like, quite literally fell apart. And that was obviously a rough, rough time in the industry. But the the guy who owned one of the partners who owned the development company also had a custom home building side, and so at that time, there were still a couple of projects that were going on, and he's like, Hey, do you want to do this work and sure give it a try, and really fell in love with it. I really, I loved the opportunity my day would be this very wealthy or an accomplished client, and then I also got to be with the guys who were just a blue collar and I just love the diversity of being able to connect those two worlds, and actually did it pretty comfortably, because I'm somewhat refined and somewhat redneck myself, and so it just felt like very natural. And then Andrew's story, well, you
Andrew Teitt 05:50
can tell you're Yeah, so I'm the youngest of seven. Sam's the middle. Yeah, there's four boys in our family. There's three girls. And so we always joke that Sam is the oldest of the youngest and the youngest of the oldest, and so there's kind of these two generations within our own family, but So Sam was the closest boy in age to me, so we grew up in it's interesting to be in some ways, because I'm the youngest. I was forgotten. So my parents would lead me everywhere. But Sam was always there as a figure that would like, essentially a dad, I mean, at that point. But so we grew up dreaming together. That's what young kids do, and we always said that one day would we would do something at that point, we thought we'd be much more successful and than we were, but we fell into custom home building. So
Mark D. Williams 06:38
was your when you were early on, were there other business owners in the family or entrepreneurs? Or how did you both know that you wanted to go to business and then start a company?
Sam Teitt 06:48
Yeah, not really.
Andrew Teitt 06:50
Our mom's actually a Presbyterian pastor, yeah, and our dad is a retired biologist. Kudos
Mark D. Williams 06:56
to your mom. Then you're a little bit like Jesus. Her their parents left him alone at the temple for a couple days too. It sounds like your your mom was just practicing what she was preaching. No, it's fine. That's right, Andrew, I wouldn't take it too personally. If anything, it's an applet that she just left you alone and didn't know where you were.
Andrew Teitt 07:11
Yeah, that's right. It turned out all right. I think
Mark D. Williams 07:14
it turned out okay. It sounds like you went to business school after college. What did you do and how soon after, did you guys join forces and basically create Bell point company? Graduated
Sam Teitt 07:24
from college, worked for that home building company for a little bit of time. Great experience in terms of what I was able to do for the company. Just project manage. I was doing the bookkeeping. I was kind of doing everything and but I knew that there really wasn't going to be a long term future for me at that firm, there are three partners some kind of toxic relationships. And I was like, I can, I think I can go and do this on my own. Conveniently, Andrew was graduating from Ohio State with a economics degree. And I mean, if you're going to jump off a cliff, it's good to hold someone's hand. And so I was like, hey, Andrew, why don't we do this together? And so he's like, Yeah, let's, let's go. And so we, you know, we kind of joke like we, when we started in 2012 we would have raked people's leaves. For, in fact, we did. We did rake people doing landscaping. Yeah, when I
Andrew Teitt 08:13
was in middle school, I started this really unsuccessful landscaping company, but I, apparently I had a charming smile. So everyone would sign up. So we were doing like, you know, maintenance and stuff like that, and actually continue to do that through college. Would hire people in this in the season here in central Ohio to run that. That company was Bell point lawn care. But when we joined we we're going to take it up a notch and call it the bell point company.
Mark D. Williams 08:38
So that's right. So, so you named it Bell point even way back when you're doing yard work. Yeah. So on your website, and I love branding, I love storytelling, I love everything about it. I'd be curious to know how much of this was deliberate or because Jackie website now is fantastic. I'm sure it's a far cry from where you started in 2012 because it's really polished and very well done right now. But what I loved about it was, I'll just read it. It says, basically, it's a home that holds the sacred pages of our story, a story of seven kids and four horses, six sheep and a dozen chickens. My home is where playing outside past dark was easy to do, where we dreamed of futures, where many of us got married, where our kids now explore the 40 acres of property, making memories of their own. And then there's this comment about when the bell rang, it was time for dinner. And even if you grew up in an urban environment, I think you can see that like right now I could close my eyes and envision I haven't seen enough movies, Old Yeller and whatever, wherever you grew up in the country, like you can very much relate to this time in life where you could play at the streets, like I had a little little cul de sac. And I can't remember if we had a boat air horn or something. We had a couple acres, and it was time to come home and out at our cabin, we did have a bell or a triangle. We had one of those dumb triangle things that you see in music class that you don't know what anyone uses it for. And did that. Where Bell point came from was that symbol and that kind of ideology even at an early age. Thank
Sam Teitt 09:55
you. That's I love, that that resonates. Because sometimes. I think when we first wrote that we're like, Is this too fluffy? But like, I love that. It does resonate. Yeah. So two things, yes, we had a dinner bell on our farm. And, like, just like, it's, you know, it says on our website, like, we were all over the place, you know, there's seven kids at one point there on the farm, and our mom would come out and bring the dinner bell, or dad, or whoever was responsible for ringing him dinner bell, and we all come running back to the house, and usually it was with a couple of our friends in tow, and we just grew up in a very welcoming we're very blessed in the family that we grew up in, and there was always room for extras at the dinner table, and so that was, that's what home meant to us. But interestingly, we also grew up on Bell Point Road. And, oh, wow, that double Yeah. So sometimes people are like, Bell point, where's Bell point come from? And I'm like, our last name is teat, and we didn't think that that would go over so well on signs in your front yard. And, you know, usually gets a chuckle, but, yeah, that's the story behind the name of Bell point. But, but from a brand perspective, it really has been like, what is home to us? And like, why do we do? What we do is going back to that idea, or that picture of like, that place where people are welcomed and we provide comfort, and we work with a lot of people. We've been very fortunate to build some really cool houses that cost lots of money. And these are people who have created abundance for their family. And I think one of the things that's cool is to see that all of that hard work is really an opportunity for them to show that love through the abundance of their homes. And so we get to do really cool it's like, Do you need a theater in your home? But no, but like, how cool is that, that we get to do those types of spaces and things like that. So anyway,
Mark D. Williams 11:41
well, I mean, I love the approach. I mean, I think oftentimes it's important for us to remember as home builders across the country, and regardless of how important of an industry, home building is, obviously, you guys build beautiful work, very architecturally driven stuff. It's really impressive. And everyone scales up through their company, and it doesn't, you know, I think sometimes I'll just use myself as an example. Like, I I love to build really high end homes and but I don't want to lose sight of, like, a home is a home. Like a shelter has been needed ever since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden and like, so like, you know, shelter is pretty important, and I've been talking about it more and more lately on the podcast, really, to sort of for builders to take a step back, look in the mirror and say, You know what you're doing. A good doing, a good job. Give yourself a pat on the back, because it's not an easy job. You know, if anyone told you building was easy, well, you got another thing that's an understood, but it doesn't, but it doesn't mean that it's not very rewarding. I mean, it's akin to a family, right? I mean, obviously being married is even good. Marriages are hard. Bad. Marriages must be terrible children, like raising children is the best thing I've ever done in my life. But doesn't make it easy. It just makes it very rewarding. I tend to go here a lot because I'm an emotional person, but I also think home building is such an intimate job. I think there's not, I can't I honestly can't think of almost any other job where you're in people's life so intimately, and yet you're not. You become grafted into their family. You know, not everyone has a relationship that lasts forever, but plenty do. I mean, you know, at Christmas, when you get your thank you cards from your homeowners, and we may be built for Tom and Susie and all sudden, you see a picture of little Bobby. Was two when he built a home, and now he's 15. You're like, holy smokes. How did he get that big? It's really, it kind of puts in perspective of what we're doing across the country, and it needs to be valued, and it needs to be
Sam Teitt 13:27
appreciated. Yeah, yeah. Well, said, Man, I love it. Do
Mark D. Williams 13:30
you think, you know, you mentioned, you know, about being present, that's something that means a lot to me. I mean, I do a lot of that on the curious bill where, you know, we talked about the wellness camps, things like that. And I feel like it's an ever moving target having young children. What does being present mean to you, both in running your business, but also, what is being present mean when you're designing people's homes? And how do you help? It's like or two. Like one is, how do you practice it? Because obviously, if your mom's a preacher, you know this, you know a sermon that is seen and not heard as well more received than one that is heard and not seen. And so how do you show not only your team and your people about being present, but how do you also help your clients be present for their families?
Andrew Teitt 14:14
Yeah, I like that. I always, I always say more is caught than taught. So a lot of what we do. So I think we're unique. We're a growing business. We're at 13 full time employees at this point, and we're rapidly growing. But I think being present for our clients, that's the first way out. That's my least favorite one to answer. My family's more important. So I'm going to end with that and not start with that. But So Sam and I are really involved in every project that we do, and one form and another, and so I think that's a little bit unique on for what we do, specifically building relationships I think we have. I mean, that's a hard question to answer. I I know, yeah, it's that's why I'm looking for an
Mark D. Williams 14:57
answer, because I think it's a doozy. I mean, we could spend the next. Five hours or five years working, I guess, the easiest
Andrew Teitt 15:02
way. So my wife and I host a party in December. This is the best way to explain our relationship with our clients. We call it the fancy party. And ultimately, what we're trying to do is just bring our best friends together and raise money for a cause. We were able to raise $5,000 but at the fancy party, we're our clients that we're building for. And so, like, that's just the type of relationship that we're having with these people, where they're just, I mean, we almost like become a part of their life, like you said, They're friends of ours. A lot of our clients are on a friend level at this point. So I think we always say we're we love building homes, but it's the relationship that us, For to us that is most important, like, we want to build your home. We want to build a relationship. And getting to know our clients is probably what we're most passionate about, getting to know their family and, you know, creating these spaces where their kids and they can enjoy these holidays. That for us was our parents farm the sanctuary. Yeah,
Sam Teitt 16:01
I think the other thing too, like, maybe pragmatically, as we approach our work from like a design perspective, is our clients. And you know, most people in this day and age are leading very busy lives, and so one of the things that we talk about a lot of times is like, when we build the home, we're not just building like you said, Mark, it's like, it's not just shelter, but we're building spaces where, one we can decrease clutter to like things have a place where you know whether that be like you walk into your mud mud room and like everything has a slot that it fits in. And how do we decrease the stress that you guys feel as a family as you come into these spaces, so that you can be present, so that it is not you know, your first introduction to coming home is like the stressful we used to do a lot of renovation work, and people would talk to them and tell me some of the pain points of your home, and they're like, Oh, I hate walking in mud room. And I'm like, Let me guess the laundry rooms in the mud room, they're like, Yes, and I trip over laundry. Like, there's nothing better than telling you you're behind on your domestic tasks, than tripping over your laundry basket as you walk in your door on a daily basis. And so I think again, going back to just from a practical approach, is designing houses where we really have tailored the home to the way that our clients live life, and to the number of kids they have, to the way that they do things. You know, one of the things that we talk about is like, you know, do you clean your house, or do you have a cleaning crew if you're cleaning your house, like having cleaning closets on each floor so that we're not dragging a vacuum around the house, and just really practical ways of understanding how people live their life to try to decrease the things that cause stress, that does reduce that our clients ability. And it seems sometimes you're like, does it all relate? I think it does, because I think, and then I think also, as Andrew said, relationships, building relationships, one of our core values is put people first. And it was like, it's just like a very like, succinct, I guess saying, but ultimately it's like, just care about people. Like, care about who they are. You know, I think our mom taught us, and our dad as well, to our mom, especially, like, everyone has a story. Everyone deserves to be heard. Everyone like, everyone deserves to be slowed down to listen to. And I think being present is also just, like, listen to their story and get to know them. And that's been something that's also really fun is that, like Andrew mentioned, we have clients that are coming to holiday parties, but then we have these blue collar guys that, you know, will go and have lunch, and they'll be, you know, crying at lunch, telling us about their family and what's going on, and just it's fun to be able to live in that space where we get to form those relationships. And I think that's that truly is what we're most passionate about. And I think that, quite honestly, I think at the end of a project you talked about, like home buildings, not easy. I think at the end of the project, and you're going to have turbulence, like it's inevitable, we're not going to get through this perfectly. There will be conflict, but if our relationship is built, and you understand that there's a high level of trust, and you know, who we are as people and all that sort of stuff, we can work through conflict, just like in you know, any relationship, we're gonna work through this because we understand who the other is, and we care deeply for one another.
Mark D. Williams 19:18
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Sam Teitt 22:32
So it's, it's funny, because our first, well, we've done this is our second spec that we've ever done that we we're in contract. We close at the end of this month. But the funny part of this is it's actually the same floor plan of the house that Jen, my wife who works with us, who she runs our design interior design Jen and I live in. So we quite literally designed a house for ourself that would meet, going back to what I just said about the way we think about our clients and how to fix it, like we did that for ourself. And then we were like, Let's build this as a spec, and we change some elements of it, especially on the exterior, and we built it. And so I think that that same kind of thought process continues. We just, we're in framing right now on another spec house that's on the market. But the same kind of thought process is also kind of like, I want to build this the way that I would want to live in a house. And I think that part of the way that we think is like, we've had the opportunity to build custom homes for a lot of different people, and so we've been able to take like, bits and pieces of every one of those projects and what works and what worked incredibly well versus what didn't work really well. And we've been able to take that level of experience. And one thing I will say is, even on the spec side of what we do, we are huge. We see the value of the architects involvement as vitally important. I think that a lot of times when you see spec houses go awry, it's like, hey, we can save a bunch of money here if we just didn't involve. You know, a really talented, slash expensive architect. And I think our theory has been like, no, that's actually that partnership is really integral to US selling this and so I think thinking about like, how would we live in this space, slash investing in that architecture and making sure that it is architecturally distinctive, that it is well thought out, well planned, we kind of get to do a lot of that, like crowdsourcing in terms of what do people want in homes, and then just really being able to put that into a house. And, like, honestly, the hardest part of the spec is, like figuring out where you should stop. You know what I mean?
Mark D. Williams 24:32
Well, I 100% agree with that. I mean, you fall in love with your own work right before you know it. You've out priced the market. So, yeah, you know, you sort of need some people on your team that can say no or something counter balance your enthusiasm. I think a lot of builders have done and do what you do, and in the sense that your touchstone, your Keystone, is yourself. It's your own family. And so you're reproducing this home that you already kind of knows what works. You've, I mean, you have the unique perspective of you've lived in it right? So now you can. And improve it. This is what I would do to make the house better. I mean, oddly enough, the home that we're doing, we're calling it Misa whose which means cozy and Swedish, and so we're creating a whole brand around it. But it's all natural materials and wellness. It's 50% me. It's fit for my family. If I joke, if I could afford my own work, I'd move into it. I sometimes joke with my clientele, they'll be upset that something's a little too expensive, and I'll be like, with a smile on my face is, don't feel bad I can't afford my work either. But anyway, a lot of that house will be me. And I think it, I think it's important, because our companies do represent our values. I think we just obviously it's a hard thing because you have to value it. It could be if you get too zealous or too unique, then all of a sudden you're building a unicorn house that nobody wants, and that's obviously dangerous.
Andrew Teitt 25:43
When we were designing our second spec, we sat down in a meeting, and what Sam was, you know, visibly frustrated, and what's going on was, like, I wouldn't live in that house. And that was when we were in the architectural plan development. So we said, okay, that's incredibly important to us any house we design from a spec perspective. So we set up a meeting with the architect, and we got the plans manipulated to a point where we came back more like both of us looked at it and said, 100% we would live in that house, and now we're in love with it, yeah? So we're designing these spec houses that are we wish we could afford to live, yeah, that we just we desire to live in. And I think I'm not going to pick on Columbus, because I love Columbus. I love the city we live in. We're in a unique market where architecture is not the focus of most of the builders in this market, and there's a lot of houses that go up and they are not architecturally well executed. Executed. Yeah, well executed. They're they all look the same. And I think when we're even in the neighborhood that we're putting our specs in right now, I think we are just architecturally unique. And people drive by the house, and we're a little aggressive on our our theory here, but like, they just look different, and people are attracted to them. They look really, really good.
Mark D. Williams 26:59
Think of a Ferrari. You're not driving the Ferrari because it's red. There are a lot of red cars you're driving because the design is sexy. I mean, it is very well designed, and the amount of time and, I mean, it's elegant. And, you know, I don't know if about cars to speak about all the engines and everything else, but there's a there's a reason why people gravitate like that looks cool right now. You could argue whether it's a family car and all those kinds of but that's also not what was designed to be. It's not meant to be a family car with a bunch of car seats and all that kind of stuff. Design does matter, and good design, design yields a premium. And when I think, and I think typically correct me if I'm wrong, but usually when we say really good design, it usually does mean it is more expensive, but I think you can have very simple design, and it can actually cut away. And I think sometimes we over complicate it by I know my personality sometimes, at least when I was younger, was if one thing is, if this is good, then 100 of them must be even better. And as I've gotten older, my wife is more of a minimalist, and it's made my way. It's made its way a little bit into my company. And some of my thought process is that less is more it actually takes. For instance, in design, it is actually much harder to design a small house than it is to design a big house. Designing a big house is actually pretty easy from I'm an armchair designer, right? I have architects and designers like right now, I have a client in this beautiful home. I'm sure it's, it's definitely over budget. And so the question is, how do we, how do we shave off 1,000,002 million? Well, you've got to get the house smaller. But, you know, the old joke is, I want a small house with a lot of rooms. Yeah, that's a big house. Yeah, most people don't know what they're looking at. You know, they'll throw at a number. I think the only thing they can relate to when we ask them, right? Is, like, how? How big of a home? People love to talk about size, and it's one of my it's an important question. You do have to ask it only because it provides some common ground. But the only thing I hate more than What size are you thinking about is what's your per foot cost? I hate that. I don't know a builder that is, I've never met that says they like that question, and the reason being is like, how much is your car weigh? How much is your grocery bag? Way, I don't know. It depends what's in it. Exactly. I mean, it depends what's in your house. So it's, I understand why clients ask it because they don't know what else to ask. It's just, I guess that's an opportunity. I shouldn't hate it so much. It's a question. It's a way for us to then show our knowledge and demonstrate to really craft the story of intentionality, of like, what do you want? What is important to you. I'll tell you what it costs once I know what's important to you. Because I could build you a square, rectangle box. I could like a metal a shipping container, or we could build one of your beautiful homes.
Sam Teitt 29:31
Yeah, we talk about that same thing a lot with our clients, of taking the time to solve the problems, versus we live in central Ohio, where it's a new subdivision is just an old corn field, and so nothing's really land locked. You can just keep going. And I think that same mentality has found its way into the local architecture, and kind of the we can fix your problem by just making it really big, and then you'll figure out how to live within the space. Because if we try to do that on paper up front, it's going to take us a lot more time, and time equals. Money, and so it's been something that we've been, I don't know, almost just like these, like, constantly, you know, telling our clients of like, Let's build smaller homes. I remember we were talking to our marketing people, and I was like, is there like, a good way that we could say, like, dumb people build huge homes? And he's like, No, we cannot say that like, but I was like, but, yeah, like, there's such better ways to figure out how to solve the problems that we have in space without just making it excessively large and and like, and not to mention the fact that with these excessively large homes, we're seeing families that really should be well connected within space that now have all of their own corners of the house to go and hide from one another. And so it's like just philosophically for us, on like a personal level, coming from a family that was, you know, kind of all always around each other. Maybe that was just because of the sheer number of people, but just creating spaces where people can connect and and so on. But Well, so what do
Mark D. Williams 30:59
you think of this idea. You mentioned intentionality. One of my favorite quotes last year was, boundaries create freedom. I say it all the time. Anyone who listens to the podcast is gonna be tired of me saying this. But anyway, where I'm going with this is, price is a boundary, size is a boundary, location is a boundary. Honestly, the more boundaries we have, the clearer the picture becomes. I remember one time asking a sculptor, it was a beautiful sculpt, sculpted piece of rock. And I said, How do you just because I'm interested in how people do things, how do you end up here? And he's like, when I start with a big piece of rock, I am just taking away the things that don't belong. And I thought that was really, really a succinct way of saying, like with minimalism, they're taking away and leaving the what remains is what they're looking for. And it's like creating in the opposite. We take something that's blank and assemble it. He was taking something that was assembled and removing it to reveal something different. I just I appreciate the elegance of that. And whereas going with this is my we grew up, and I understand that this is not everyone, then the world we're in with technology. Now it distracts us all the time. I was fortunate enough to grow up, and we never had a TV in our house, and so I really enjoyed that. It was also all I knew. It's just how I grew up. And so we were outside all the time. We were playing. We got really into sports and read a ton of books. And so that became that informed. I realized I was different at a very early age, just when you go to people's homes and you don't understand it as a kid, now as an adult, and knowing that, like our phones, our iPads, everything is constantly begging for our attention. How do we as home builders create these spaces of refuge and quiet? Because everything in this life is only trying to take away our attention more and more and more and more. And I say this because I don't know the answer, but I'm trying to help people. I bring it up in conversation to see how people react to it. But in my spec home, I'm actually I don't have kids that are teenagers. I have young kids. So at some point soon, I'm going to have to deal with some of these things that are bigger issues. And one of the things I've heard from another parent that I've sort of modeled is if I build a home that has smaller bedrooms, then the then the children have to be in the common spaces, which is where I want my family to be. I'm not saying that you don't need alone time, or kids don't need their space and but you know these, and again, I this is my these are my boundaries, so they don't have to be someone else's boundaries. And there's a, there's obviously a middle here, but I just think it's really interesting. Sometimes I'll share that story with people, and sometimes they'll respond like, they'll say, oh, yeah, I like that. Or you'll hear people say, like, I don't need a giant owner suite. You know, I don't need a sitting room. Is very rare for me, anyway, where someone says, I do want to retire to my owner suite and, like, watch TV and read a book all by myself. I think I can think of one person in 20 years that's ever said that, but my and I understand they exist. They just haven't been my clientele. And so I, I guess I'm just saying when we ask questions. Are we helping them or are we hurting them? And how are we because a lot of our job is is, of course, listening, but it's asking the questions and then seeing how they respond. Because a lot of times, I don't think the clients even know what questions to ask. And so it's kind of up, up to us as builders to ask those questions and to think about it, to elicit a response. Yeah,
Sam Teitt 34:00
I think it's along those lines you were talking about earlier, like the price per square foot question that oftentimes get asked, gets asked, and Andrew and I talk about this a lot, is a lot of, you know, clients will come to us and they're like, I've never done this before, you know. And so some of the questions that they have come from, like, a place of ignorance, not in that these people are not into, I mean, these are very intelligent, very successful doctors, lawyers, you know, entrepreneurs that we're working with. But some of the questions come from this place of ignorance. And I think that the question asking, part of it is us also helping to kind of lead them in that process of thought, of like, figuring out what they truly want. And so I think, like, price per square foot, it's really interesting, because we, we'd say, like, most times, this is the largest financial transaction that any of our clients have ever made, and they're probably starting it from a place of having the least amount of or experience in making the decisions, which, you know. From the way that we've structured our business on the interior, like having interior design integrated and all that sort of stuff, we've tried to say, like, yes, that is where you start, but here's how we help. But I think I love that idea of using the questioning of how you live life, and do you host for holidays? If you do host, who are you hosting? And that might also, not only is how big does the table need to be, it's also, what type of bathroom should we have in the bedrooms, and how are we going to use bathrooms? And if your sister and her kids are coming to stay with you, what does that look like? And how do we make sure that this home is tailored to the way you live life? So yeah, anything to add to that? Andrew,
Andrew Teitt 35:37
I think every market is like this right now, but I felt like the square footage conversation was harder five years ago than it is today, and I think now it's the cost of construction is really our ally, in a way, when it comes to building more intentional spaces, because clients are required, because of how expensive things are, to build more intentionally, like it's not something that we have to convince them to do. It's something they have to do. We just have to figure out how to design these homes to be as efficient as they possibly can. And so that, I think that's kind of helping us solve the problem our market, again, is we're not land locked. There's nothing around Columbus other than space, and with space, you can throw more big houses up. And I think our restricting factor now is becoming price. Is what we're experiencing about, sorry, yeah, that boundary. I think
Mark D. Williams 36:30
in Europe, I think some of this is cultural. And you just brought up something, I hadn't considered that price will help us build homes that are more intentional and smaller, because they there's there you can we can make the home smaller, or we can use different products. That's about the only things we should do. Usually, what they ask you to do is build the same house and you just make less. Which, if this podcast does one thing, it's I want builders to make more money, because, Amen brother, we're all we're already under we are already under charge. Every single builder in the country under charges. I don't care who you are. You
Sam Teitt 37:03
under charge. Sorry. Good evening. Mark, no, go ahead. I was going to say when you weigh the liability of building, what we build, the structure, the beyond the do you want this product for one year? Or do you want this product because you're you stand behind your work. We just did some work on, actually, one of the first projects that we ever did was for a family friend, and we just rebuilt the chimney that was flashed in properly, that was done in 2012 that when it's one of those things where we're like, there is nothing in paper on paper that says that we should be responsible for rebuilding this, but it's like, you know, and so when you do, like, going back to What you said is under charging and being under compensated. And you know what we find sometimes is that there are builders in the market that are desperate for work and have kind of created a black market. And I mean, I I've met with several younger builders, you know, even younger than us, that I've said, like, the worst thing that you can possibly do is be good at what you do and not charge enough, because you make it impossible for any of us to charge enough, because you're actually pretty damn good at what you do. Yeah? So
Mark D. Williams 38:07
I don't know where that narrative comes from. I suspect it's, I mean, that's a whole podcast all in itself, but yeah, I think part of it is look back in your career. You guys been around for 13 years, and so you look back early on. You'd rake leaves, you'd sweep the street, you would have shoveled, you would have done everything. I'm not saying that urgency to do anything and everything is gone, but also understanding what your worth is. I think it takes a little maturity, and it takes a little time and a little and some and people figure out at different points in their career, not every path is linear, and not everyone ages obviously differently. And so in terms of their mental capacity and even their skill set, right? Like, I hope, like I am a better builder today than I was previously. I always built really good homes. I'm proud of every home I've ever built. I always assembled it with really good team. But I just know more. I think it's akin to sports, right? Tom Brady used to always say, if he could however old he was when he retired, 44 or whatever, yeah, he could go back as a 22 year old and have the same knowledge set with his physical abilities, which were never astounding. His mind was always his greatest weapon. You know, how much further on would you be? And so I think there's a place for everything. I mean, I was mentioning this the other day, of like, someone asked me the question like, What would you differently if you could go back and tell your younger self something from an older self? And one of it is just confidence when things are going good, like you can't be stopped, like you're on fire, and when things are going bad, I mean, it's that you can't give your houses away. And it's, you know, call it desperation. Every business is not exclusive to building. It's the sales cycle. It's up and down. And you mentioned, like, when things are really slow, like, man, you gotta tighten your belt. What do you do? Do you work harder? You cast a bigger net? Do you take a lower margin? The problem is, when you start getting away from what who you are and what your brand is. I mean, everyone has to put food on their table and pay their mortgage and pay their people. So I get it sometimes you have to be more aggressive. But I hope that people are being more aggressive with a strategy, because if we do it, that all we're doing is we're just we're all going to the lowest common. Denominator. We're all just taking money out of each other's pockets for who for the homeowners. And I'm not saying we don't value them. We do, but if you really valued somebody, you'd give them the truth. This is what it costs to build your house. It'd be like a surgeon if you went into the surgeon and said, Hey, I need heart surgery. Like, yeah, I really don't want to do heart surgery. Can you do could you adjust my kneecap? Excuse me, no, I mean, you have an issue with your heart. Is there nobody ever asked their doctor, like, Hey, could you do it at the cheaper way? Like, could you use that old scalpel who made, like, have a discount heart transplant? Yeah. No. I, like, my cousin is a roofer up in Alaska, and he's like, I want he goes. I want my surgeon to be driving a Ferrari. In fact, I would have to show up differently in a different colored Ferrari every day. I want to know he's making it bank. Because, you know what, he's got my life in his hands. I want him to be good and well compensated.
Sam Teitt 40:48
Yeah, no, it's, it's true. It's an, I mean, I think that some of that, too is low barrier to entry. I think, you know, I don't know what it's like in your market in terms of, like, if you have to have a license to build, but in the Columbus market, it seems like if you have a cell phone and can write your name, you can become a home builder. And so I think some of that is seeing a lot of guys in the trades who look at home builders and think, you guys are making all the money. Some of that, I think, is because there's a lot of home builders that don't really understand the money that they're making, and they think that because it's in their bank account, it's theirs, which is not really the case. And so you see a lot of guys driving trucks that they can make the monthly payment on, but maybe not really afford when it comes down to it. And so there's like, this lure of, like, pulling people from the trades wanting to become home builders, but not really having that business acumen to really understand, like, are we profitable? What should we be charging and quite honestly, like we have, you know, if when people are like, how did you guys get to where you are and building these types of houses, I like, man, we have been very blessed that we've been able to fail forward. We've been able to learn from our mistakes. Correct we, you know, we were at the right place at the right time, and like the Columbus market is absolutely booming. We've had a lot of blessing in our life that has allowed us to figure out how to how to correct the errors that we bad assumptions when it comes to pricing or estimating or the wrong pricing model. And I don't know, I think that you go back to like, why do we not charge enough? I think it's because there is this reality that there's competition from people who don't really understand their business, because they've been it's so stinking easy for them to get into business.
Mark D. Williams 42:36
This episode is brought to you by Pella Northland. For 20 years, I've been using Pella windows, and I couldn't be happier to call them as a business. Partner, a trade partner, and someone that really supports us in our quality builds. You know, we use wood windows and doors on every single one of our homes, and 98% of every home that I've ever built has been a Pella window. I've gotten to know their team here, locally, as well as nationally, and the way that they support us as a craftsman, as well as they support our homeowners with their lifelong guarantee. It's actually been a game changer for me. So when people ask me who I use, I recommend Pella. If you want to hear more about Pella story, you can listen to episode one, where I interview Peter and Ed from Pell Northland about their journey into the Pella ownership. I think sometimes it's hard to run a business and and because you want to have a heart and we're building we're building, we're going back to the beginning of the podcast. We're building with people. And in I know I find that. I don't know if you guys find this challenging, I assume you do, but I'll you can answer for yourself. So I'll be building a home, and I and like, I'll look at the their face and like, I can tell they can't afford a certain part of it, and because if they can't afford the house, like, I can't build them. I mean, I have a for profit business as it should be, right? But we are conscientious, like, I want it for them. Like I, you know, gift giving is one of my love languages. So it's like, if I can give them the gift of, you know, and it's fun to have surprise. But like, I look back on my clients are the happiest. My happiest clients are the ones that we've actually done the best financially on. Because I, guess what, I give them the best service. I give them the most, like, upgrades at no cost. I give them like kind of the it's the hospitality is so much better, because, guess what, we're not struggling. It's like swimming with an anchor around your neck, your only serve, your only goal is to survive to another day where, if you're in a boat, you're like, you know what? I can jump out of the boat right now and I'll be fine. I can get back in the boat, right? I think when we are, when we position our business in a place that's really healthy, it now allows us. I think that's why, at some point you become successful, or hopefully you do, and then when you do, it seems almost like, Well, why? Man, why do they keep getting the breaks? Or you mentioned, people look at you like, Man, why does Bell point keep getting all these great jobs? You've built something so that you can, you can actually do those things for your clients, which, guess what? Increases your reputation. It makes you easier for you and your family to do your job. I mean, it's kind of like the rain keeps coming and keeps blessing the people that already have crops. I don't know if any of that resonates with you, or how you feel about when you give it to your clients, for
Sam Teitt 44:56
sure. Yeah, I think that the reality too, is that. We've just, from a very practical perspective, is we have staffed your project appropriately with someone who's knowledgeable. We haven't asked them to build, you know, eight houses at one time. We've given them the time that they need, from a bandwidth perspective, to actually achieve success. And that's a hard thing. That was a hard thing for us to had conversations with other builders when we were going from renovating to new construction. I'm like, we were at this point where we're just selling more projects. I was like, I told him, I'm like, I felt like we had financial diarrhea. We were like, grabbing the next job to get cash into our business, and nothing was left to nourish ourselves. I have never,
Mark D. Williams 45:37
I have never heard that term, but that is so accurate financial diarrhea, yeah, but,
Sam Teitt 45:42
but you think about it like, it's a terrible analogy, but you think about it and I'm like, if it were, if it were our bodies and that food was to give us that reaction, would it make any sense for us to be like, You know what? I'm going to double down and I'm going to eat another plate of Alfredo, because that really worked the first time. At some point, like, stop. That's not healthy. It's not good for your body. It's not good for your organization. Change what you're ingesting and the way that you're ingesting it, so that you can become healthy and you become and you know, that took confidence. You know, that was also a big risk for us when we we went from fixed price to cost plus at a time where I'm like, How are we ever going to sell a cost? Cost Plus project, you know. And again, talk about blessing. We did it pre COVID, and so we had put systems in place that allowed us to go through COVID and the craziness that that whole time in life, I feel like at PTSD, just talking about COVID, but, you know, but we were very blessed in that we had systems in place that allowed us to operate in cost plus manner and have very transparent conversations with clients at a very volatile time. So
Mark D. Williams 46:42
let me ask you. Let me ask you this. So I used to do fixed bid as well for maybe the first 1213, years. And as we sort of scaled up to more complicated homes and bigger homes, we switched to cost plus, you know, the way the contract reads, it's very simple. The client is taking the risk versus fixed bid. We have to, we have to charge a higher margin on fixed bid, but we are now taking the risk. It's like insurance. That makes total sense. The problem with cost plus is the client still holds you to a fixed bid. I find even, and I'm not, I'm just saying, like, right now we have a situation where they're on a they're on a cost plus. And so I'll lay out the scenario. The trimmer missed something on the bid. Wasn't a big number. It's very small, actually, but it just was it on the plan. Yes, he missed it. Our team missed seeing it, that they missed it, but it's a cost plus, I mean, the way the contract goes, the client should pay for that. Now, I'm kind of stuck on this one, and I've just what I've thought about this the way I resolved it. It's an architect that I really enjoy working with. I want to do more work with them. The client is going to refer us, so I'm going to actually use it as an opportunity to sell. I'm going to tell the homeowner, because if they don't know about it, then how can you sell it? So I'm going to say, You know what, we messed up because we didn't catch it. The trimmer also messed up because he didn't get it this. Just so you know this by the contract and by the law, this is something you should pay. But I want you to know you've been such a great client that I'm going to take care of this. I think the money that I'm going to write off, I couldn't possibly buy an ad or market any better than that money spent right there with not only the architect as a client, but also as the homeowner. It took me a while to sort of reason through that. Yeah, how do you how have you approached that it's
Sam Teitt 48:21
so hard, it is, it is hard. It's so I and Andrew, just, Andrew, just, Andrew's snorting. Because, like, he'll, he'll, like, and we both say this, sometimes we're like, cost plus is the hardest way that you can possibly do business. Like, a fixed price would be easier, because then like, like, what's happening in the kitchen at a restaurant, you have no idea that they're cussing and someone cut their finger and all that sort of stuff, what you ultimately see is your beautiful plate of food that gets delivered to you. And it kind of like that weird analogy, but I'm full of weird analogies, but I think that I have a couple thoughts, if you come in under budget on something, are you going is the customer going to benefit from being under budget, yes, and that's usually the conversation that we'll have is like, Hey, we're we're humans. I think one of the things too, is we try to start having these very realistic conversations in the sales phase that says we've put that an estimate of cost together, and we're not perfect humans, and we also don't know every element of what's going into your home. And so you should either I will tell every single client, you're either going to start with a contingency in our contract, or you're going to start with a contingency in your bank account. I don't care where the money is, but we have to be very realistic about the rat like about the fact that that number, there is an estimate, and you should be prepared for some level of one of our best clients that I've ever built for when I had that conversation, he said this was like having lunch with him after the project, probably a year after the project was done. He's like, it was really funny. You had that conversation with me about contingency and kind of how I should think about that and approach it. And I. You know, and it was really just me setting the stage for cost plus, and maybe some of the dysfunction of cost plus. He's, like, it was really funny. I walked away and I didn't know I, like, I had two thoughts in my head, either, I never want to hire this guy, because he just basically told me that, like, it might come in over budget, budget, or this is definitely the guy I want to work with, because he is, like, realistic and honest enough to talk about things that aren't like rainbows and butterflies on the front side. And I think our tendency in sales is to like, we want to go like, rainbows and butterflies, and then when you get into contract and you're like, Well, now it's not all rainbows and butterflies, isn't it? Like our tremor forgot something on the plan and we didn't catch it. And like, have we set the stage properly up front in the sales so that our contract can follow? Does that make sense? No,
Mark D. Williams 50:46
for sure, it doesn't. Obviously, we love sales. The easiest person the world to sell to is me. Sales. People love to sell, and so including ourselves. But I think you're right. I think as again, as you get older, I think realizing that, I think there, there is certainly an art to a sale. So I'm not going to say, having been in sales my whole life, there's certainly an art to it, but I think there is a part of it. People want to connect with people, and people, the art of the sales is obviously asking for the work. That's a big part of it, oversimplifying it, but sometimes just the confidence of saying what it is. And even, like price. You know, we went earlier in the conversation. We said, don't cut your own throat, kind of thing. I've been in bid situations before where they said, Hey, there's another builder, and they're 200,000 less than you can you match them? I say, No, I can't. I cannot. I don't remember the exact number, so it doesn't matter. But, like, I can't match them. But if you want the level of service that we're going to provide, and if we're if we're going to build you the home that you want built. This is what it costs to do that. If you want to change something, I'd be happy to work with you to modify it, but I can't. I've been joking lately. I can't pay my painter less by telling them do a crappy job. I can't blindfold the painter and then tell you what. I'll knock 20,000 off your painting bid. But he's blindfold like who knows what those Gabby look like. And so and that client hired me because we've all seen it before where someone all of a sudden just was at a high price, and also they drop it big time. I've had a painter before where their bid was really out of whack, and I asked them, and they lowered it like a massive amount. And that was a huge red flag to me, because I'm like, wait a minute, if you could lower it that fast and that big like, well, what does that mean about it? It was just, it's just interesting. So I guess my point is just being clear and owning your story. And I think people to your point earlier about the people that respect you, like they're going to hire you because they want to work with you. And at the end of the day, I actually try to make it not a game about my home or the quality or the price. I actually just make it about the relationship. Do you want to work with our team? We're going to be here for two years, you know, between six months in design and an hour and a hour year and a half of building like choose the team you want to spend a year and a half of your life? Yeah,
Andrew Teitt 52:53
it's when we evaluate, like our ideal client, to the one that comes to us and wants the relationship. Are the projects that we land, the one that comes to us and wants to negotiate and figure out what the price is and like that. That's the work. We don't win, you know. So there'll be scenarios where we go. I think that's also the advantage of being brothers and working together, is there's deals that come to us and everyone gets tempted in sales. I've talked to this guy for for seven straight weeks or six straight months. We got to make the deal work. And Sam can be like, No, and I can tell Sam No,
Sam Teitt 53:25
so that we can be guarded. We literally have this going right now where I've, like, I gave, like, a very high level budget to a client, where it was, like a $600,000 range of costs that. And I'm like, see this as nothing other other than a zip code that I think you might land within based on what I've seen and what we've built. And I had a call with him yesterday, and he's like, Would you cut your plus on your cost plus by 2% and I was like, yeah, let me, you know, rev them. No. Ian, like, straight up, no. I'm like, let me talk to my brother about it. And Andrew today at lunch, he's like, how did that call go? I was like, I'll talk to you about it later. And so, like, we literally haven't even had a chance. That was me telling Andrew how the conversation. He just said, no. It's yeah, no, but it is. It is funny to your point mark, the best projects we have are the people who allow us to work. Like, we're going to tell you what allows us to be excellent, and if you trust us, I think we can be excellent if we tell you it allows us to be excellent. And you say, Can you do it for a little less? And like, we're foolish to believe that we can still execute on everything the exact same when you take away parts of I
Mark D. Williams 54:30
mean, the real question there that Andrew will then tell you after this call is over, is we can meet your price. What do you want to change so that we can help get you there? Are you open to us changing. And I think sometimes clients don't know what else to ask. But if you're going on a sworn construction statement and you're showing Cost Plus, they see 200 line items above, or whatever your calculations look like, but the only one they really remember and look at is the bottom one. And again, the storytelling, the narrative they spent, however long your presentation is, you're an hour. 90 minutes into it, and they get pretty roasted, and at the end they all remember one number, what's your GC fee? Okay, I want to go lower, so I guess that number's going lower. Yeah.
Andrew Teitt 55:08
Back to our analogy. Builders don't make enough. You don't go to your doctor and negotiate his fee. You go to your doctor and say you're the expert I want help,
Sam Teitt 55:16
right? Best clients, yeah. And I think that's what's tough is like you don't know exactly what your doctor is making. And I think that's the thing is, with cost plus is we're putting it right out there in front of you. Part of that is, and I've said this to clients, is, I'll give you a fixed price if you can tell me absolutely everything that's going in that house, down to the style of Rob hooks that are going to hang on the wall in your primary bathroom. And they're like, Well, certainly we can't do that. And I'm like, well, then certainly I cannot tell you what it's going to cost. I can give you allowances, and we can do all that sort of stuff, but like, at the end of the day, we can do a fixed, fixed price with a mountain of allowances. Doesn't that sound a whole lot like a plus plus? Don't
Mark D. Williams 55:57
you think that? I think ultimately what we're doing is like, who tells the best story? Yeah, I'm thinking more of like, little kids, right? Like, you know, there's certain people, certain voices, you know, how they tell a story? Like, you could have a book read 10 different ways, but certain people, like, ooh, that they have got it. They got a great delivery. I listen to a lot of audio books, and there are certain, there are certain, there are certain narrators that I'll find out what other books they like. I might just listen to one of their books just just because their voice is so good, you're like, Man, that is a talent. I think that is a underrated sailing selling tool is just the art of the storytelling, yeah. And I think it goes back to the homes and crafting your company, and you also have a short window. I mean, I don't know what your sales cycle looks like. I mean, mine is a 15 minute phone call, a one hour meeting, and if they're not in a period construction agreement by then they're not a fit. Now, I'll still call on them and a kid, but I mean, ultimately you're kind of like, here's the on ramp, and it's not again, it's going back to the dentist or doctor. Like you do a checkup. They they say, Hey, this is what it's gonna take to do this. Great. You schedule it like, I think one of the benefits we have at the higher end, you know, what's called the luxury market, is most of them are professionals. Most of them are hiring you to do a professional service. So they actually kind of want you to get to the point. I mean, I've got some clients are, like, You're talking too much. Like, let's get this thing done. Like, sometimes we're, we're, we get in our own way. I know I do, because I'm a chatterbox. Yeah, Andrew's laughing.
Sam Teitt 57:14
I am as well. I talk a lot. Do
Andrew Teitt 57:18
you well as we close, Sam talks more than me, is that? Is that evident? It
Mark D. Williams 57:22
is yeah, on this Yeah. I'm not sure. In case the audience is known, that person that just chimed in. His name is Andrew. He's also on this podcast. But no what I was going to say, one thing that I was going to compliment you on on your website, I have never seen a job listing on a website before for a company, for those that haven't checked it out, like, go to bellpoint company.com, and we'll have everything in the show notes for the exact URL. But I thought it was really cool. Like, right now I was on your website this morning. It says, head of construction. You show this the salaries between 100 and 135,000 a year. Marketing and brand lead is 55 to There's no mystery about it. You're telling them exactly, like shocking, like we are. You know, when we interview people, we sort of just leave it open. But, like, I found this so refreshing to, like, read this and see this, tell me about how this came about, because I think this is amazing. Yeah,
Andrew Teitt 58:15
I'm gonna let Andrew talk. Yeah. So we were fortunate enough we hired a finance and HR manager probably 18 months ago, right around then, almost two years ago. But anyway, so we we've been working. We're in total growth mode, scale mode, and we're making a lot of hires in 2025 and so one of the initiatives we have is, where were we going to reach out to an external recruiter we get? Were we going to recruit within so we finally made the decision after interviewing a significant amount of external recruiters, is to try to recruit within we, my wife, is in corporate America, so we get the privilege of bouncing a lot of the things we do off of her. And she was at a tech startup that started in Columbus, maybe 10 years ago, and has, I think she was employee 100 and some and now it's was purchased by McKesson. It's a huge corporate company, but she decided to do a passion project of consulting, and one of the things that she consulted on was hiring in that process. And so she's kind of been working with our team and our HR manager, but in talking to her, one of the things they do in corporate America is salary is important. Why do you guys hide it? That's one of the most qualifying things that you can put out in front of someone. And it's the least it like, it's it's very sensitive for people to talk about. So for us, as we go, what are qualifications? Well, if you want to make between that range, then let's talk, and if not, then let's not talk. So for us, it was kind of an easy decision, but it's really abnormal to do that. We use a payroll company that our HR manager was able to build this career kind of data page off of, and we were able to post that as a part of our website with, you know, the most important information, and we posted these, the market's crazy. And I think we've had 80 or 80. 90 applicants, really? Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 1:00:04
wow. And so what do you fit so just in general, or not just these two positions, or how long has the have these been available? March
Andrew Teitt 1:00:11
13, or, sorry, March 11, which was just a refresh of the head of construction role, and then the brand and marketing was went live on February 13.
Mark D. Williams 1:00:21
So I think you're talking about just a few days for the one and a month for the other, and you've
Andrew Teitt 1:00:25
had, I think, over 90 at this point, maybe close to so what? Okay, now I
Mark D. Williams 1:00:29
gotta ask the question, what's the pre qualification process before it gets to you? Certainly you don't meet with 90 people. No. How are you vetting all these applications?
Andrew Teitt 1:00:38
We're going through each resume individually, and then if they if it's a resume match, we feel like it's a resume match, they'll get a phone interview with our HR manager, and at that point, we'll give them a rank, and if they rank high enough, based on some qualifications that we put together, they'll get a chance to meet with Sam and myself. So we don't have to go through 90. Hopefully we get to go through it enough to decide who
Mark D. Williams 1:01:03
I'm. Just, how many have you actually interviewed with out of 90?
Andrew Teitt 1:01:06
Not none. Yet, us personally, our HR manager is probably up to 10, maybe eight. Phone interviews, phone interviews, 30 minutes. Yeah, 30 minute phone
Sam Teitt 1:01:17
interview. Wow, that's, I
Andrew Teitt 1:01:19
mean, I'm sure you've hired, but a lot of that is she doesn't know the skills. That's what we know. But are they a cultural fit? So
Mark D. Williams 1:01:27
that's what she's weighing in on, or that's what you're weighing in on, that's
Andrew Teitt 1:01:30
what she's weighing in on. Would it? Would it? Would it fit our culture? Do they share our values? Do they believe in the vision that we have for our company? And we've learned a lot about hiring in the 12 years we've done this, and I feel like if I were to pat ourselves on the back anywhere in the last 24 months, it's like we finally semi figured out how to hire the right person.
Sam Teitt 1:01:50
Yeah, and I close, I think one of the one of the big things is build a house for a very successful entrepreneur who started a business in his early 30s and grew it to hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. And like this, is one thing that I love about us, the clients we get to work with, is I always try to take advantage of picking the brain, asking them for to launch and saying, You've experienced it. You saw the sausage making. Let me ask you questions now, but one of the things he said to me that has stuck with me is, don't hire for who you are today. Hire for who you want to become. What's the vision you have for your business, and are you hiring people today that are going to be the right fit for that vision that you have? And and that was like a punch to the gut, and that goes all the way back to like, do we understand what we can afford? Do we understand how these people are going to be billable? And so we have a fractional CFO who is with us for one day a week. And does it's been a
Andrew Teitt 1:02:45
huge kind of a do you operate on EOS mark?
Mark D. Williams 1:02:49
I've interviewed several. I've we're thinking about doing kind of a EOS light. Maybe this fall. You're hiring a lot of people. Have you guys already sort of sold the jobs, and so you're backfilling the talent? Now, are you front loading the talent and then going and getting the
Sam Teitt 1:03:03
jobs some both, yeah, like, I think that we have, we're kind of in a position where we're, like, we know that we're in a position where this works for this period of time, and beyond that, we have to go and sell a lot more work for work long term, which I can tell you, like is, for me, is like, frightening, like that, that part of it, because there's this, there's this other idea of as a custom home builder, like, I could go build one of these houses by myself and probably make the same amount of money and not have to manage all these people and not have all this stress. But what do I want this to be in the future? And you know, I mentioned to you in some of the emails that the email I sent this morning is like, we're really passionate about building a great company that builds great houses. And I think that, like, that's not the SAM and Andrew show, that is a team of people who get the vision and are encouraged and have hopes for financial success of their own within the bell point organization. And so I think going, you know, going back to what I what I was saying initially, is just really trying to hire people, understanding what we can afford and, and hiring people for the future Bell point, not the current Bell point, and, and that's again, that's
Andrew Teitt 1:04:12
we also need people. We have too much work and not enough people. Yeah, which is a good problem
Mark D. Williams 1:04:16
to have. Are you guys? Are you guys? Sell self, performing anything? We
Andrew Teitt 1:04:21
have two interior trim carpenters that, but they don't have enough capacity to really manage the other than they do a lot of our specialty work, so two guys on our staff. Everything else is sub based, yeah,
Sam Teitt 1:04:33
but I would say like the such an important part for anyone listening to this who's contemplating hiring new employees is like understanding their numbers, understanding their capacity and their hours and their utilization and all that sort of stuff that seems like, Hey, I'm so busy, certainly I need help, and we've been there. We bring people into the organization, and we don't have those numbers in front of us and the metrics, and we don't know how to reward them for good work, or we don't know when to get. Rid of them for bad work and all those sort of things. And so, yeah, we that's been something we've
Andrew Teitt 1:05:04
really taken a unique approach here at Bell point where, as Sam said, we failed forward. But you know, what we knew how to do is do really good work, and now what we're figuring out in year 13 is how to run a really healthy business. So not that we don't still do good work. Now we're just, you know, we get to do good work and we get to prioritize running a really healthy business?
Mark D. Williams 1:05:23
Yeah, I wish we would have, I mean, every episode is great. This would be we could do another whole, another podcast, just on your adoption of Eos. I mean, I feel like a lot of builders do it, and they're very successful and they like it. Yeah, I'd love to chat with you more about it. It will bring you on in a year and chat more about it. Yeah, how many, how long have you guys been in it almost two years, just maybe just over two years, and the team buy in has been great, too, I assume
Sam Teitt 1:05:46
great bit, yeah, like, we're Andrew and I will finish this meeting. We'll have our construction division. It's called a D 10. It's a lot of our construction D 10. And we've got guys coming in who are, like, looking at data points that were never being looked at before. And you see these guys like, their eyes getting bright when they see their like, because we're cost plus, so we only make plus when there's cost. And so we look at cogs on a weekly basis. Is like, that is like, the key performance indicator of your project is like, are we hitting these average weekly cogs on your project? And if we are, that means we're probably on schedule, because usually the electrician doesn't send a bill until he's finished with the work, and then they begin to get it. And when we talk about like, hey at the year at year end, and we look at our annual budgets, they they really have a understanding of, like, how their project impacts that bottom
Mark D. Williams 1:06:32
line. Did you end up hiring a US implementer to kind of help you onboard all that? Are they Yeah, are they still with you now?
Andrew Teitt 1:06:40
Yeah, yeah, yes. We meet with her on Monday, yeah, how often quarter we meet with her quarterly, and then we have, like, a more intensive annual at the end of the year, and then she's, we can, if we want to call her every day, we could, yeah, I mean, that's the type of relationship very well. We don't do that. We don't have the time to do that. But right? Very well, actually,
Sam Teitt 1:06:59
the same group that she's with, or Peter Martin, I think he uses
Andrew Teitt 1:07:03
the same company. She,
Mark D. Williams 1:07:05
oh, sure, yeah, I've met them before with his, like, Pinnacle or, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm Yeah, I met them. Hey, we'll
Andrew Teitt 1:07:12
introduce you to Rebecca. She can fly up to Minneapolis. Yeah,
Sam Teitt 1:07:15
I will tell you, man, one thing. When we first looked at that pricing, I was like, how could we ever afford this? And I, like, started to think about it. I'm like, You know what? This is a personal trainer for our business. And, like, I'm looking around, and we could really use a flipping personal trainer as a business. And it was one of those, like, hand up. We could also, if you're watching in video for can also use personal trainers.
Andrew Teitt 1:07:40
Keep my name out of your mouth.
Sam Teitt 1:07:41
Anyway. I think it was one of those things where we were just like, we want to be healthy. We want this to be healthy. We want this to have longevity. We want our clients. What does legacy look like, right? What does legacy look like? Or most financial investment like, are we going to be here tomorrow? And, you know, also respecting that like we're not. We just don't want to be a one off builder. And so we've had to sacrifice in places because we've invested money there that we haven't been able to put into our bank accounts, necessarily, and but it's been for the future Bell point and what we're trying to become. I love
Mark D. Williams 1:08:13
everything we've heard that we'll have everything in the show notes. We could talk for two more hours, but we better cap it here. Thanks again for tuning in to the cures builder podcast, and you guys can reach out to Andrew and Sam through their Instagram handle as well as their website. We'll have everything in the show notes. Thanks again for coming on, boys.
Sam Teitt 1:08:28
Appreciate it. Thanks so much. We'll see you. Bye.
Mark D. Williams 1:08:33
We're excited to announce that the curious builder collectives are going into three other states. For those not familiar with what the collective is, it lives between what the contractor coalition is, and a builder 20 group, what we do in each state is we have a group of 25 to 30 builders that get in a room, and you break up into groups of nine. You spend 45 minutes talking about a set topic, whether it's branding, marketing, contracts, whatever that set topic is for that day. And then you talk for 45 minutes. You get up, you mix up the groups, and you do it again, and you're out of there. You'll be out in under three hours. We're going to be going to Phoenix, Arizona. Brad Levitt is going to be leading a curious collective in Phoenix, Arizona. We are going to San Antonio. We've got David and Angela Penske from Penske homes, leading a group down there. And we have Brad Robinson and Vince Longo in Atlanta, Georgia, also leading the collective, as well as obviously me in Minnesota as well for our second annual collective. So if you're interested in collaborating with other builders, if you really want to dive deep on your business in a person to person relationship, ask a lot of questions. The collectives are for you. We also have in Minnesota interior design collective as well as the architect collective, check out the Events page at the cures builder podcast.com thanks for tuning in to curious builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders. To expand their business, please share it with your friends. Like and review online and thanks again for tuning in. You.
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