Episode 167 - Tyler Webster on Risk, Relationships, & Why Enough Is a Moving Target
#167 | Tyler Webster | Old Mill Building Products | Risk, Relationships, & Why Enough Is a Moving Target
Most people don't think about what happens to their business when their one critical supplier goes down — Tyler Webster of Old Mill Building Products lived that nightmare firsthand and spent the last three years making sure it never happens again. Mark and Tyler get into the nuts and bolts of supplier diversification, why just-in-time manufacturing sounds great until a robot breaks in a brick kiln, and how the lessons from a fifth-generation Idaho potato farm shaped Tyler's entire philosophy on risk, resilience, and what it means to save for the rainy day. The bonus? Tyler's personal definition of "enough" might be the most quietly powerful answer this season.
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About Tyler Webster
Tyler Webster was raised on a 1,700-acre potato farm in Idaho, where long days, tight margins, and unpredictable conditions were part of everyday life. That environment built a bias for action and a respect for the people you rely on to get the job done. It also taught him early that strong relationships are not optional. They are what carry you through the tough seasons.
Today, he leads Old Mill Building Products, focused on serving builders and contractors across the country. While the scale and industry have changed, his approach hasn’t. In a space that often defaults to price and transactions, he’s focused on building a company that plays the long game. That means doing what he says, solving problems quickly, and treating customers and suppliers like partners, not line items.
He believes the best builders think the same way. Product matters. Price matters. But trust is what keeps projects moving and businesses growing. At Old Mill, that belief shows up in how the team works with customers, how decisions get made, and how success is measured. It’s a straightforward approach, shaped by his background and tested every day in the building products business.
Resources:
Visit the Old Mill Building Products Website
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Tyler Webster 00:04
I want to love my job, and the last three and a half years I've been so different compared to my previous almost 20. I got to a point in my career where Sunday I turned into a monster. I hated the way I was, you know, I knew that I was gonna have to go battle for another week, and I just turned into a jerk to the people that mattered most.
Mark D. Williams 00:31
Welcome to Pierce Bureau Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. We are back out to Salt Lake City. Seems like I've been here for a while. I'm loving.. I might actually have to move. It's got mountains, it's got builders, and I really like the vibe here. I've got Tyler Webster from Old Mill Building Products. Hey, Tyler, how's it going?
Tyler Webster 00:46
Good, Mark. Thanks for having me. I'm excited for a conversation today.
Mark D. Williams 00:49
I know we actually scheduled this like several months ago, and you and Jared, your VP of sales, were just in Minneapolis for Sonic Camp here just two months ago. So, thanks for making the effort to come out. It was fun to sweat out some ideas with Ian Asana, so thanks for coming.
Tyler Webster 01:04
Yeah, it was a great event, and it fits right in with, like, kind of our ethos of building relationships and having fun while we do
Mark D. Williams 01:12
it.
Mark D. Williams 01:12
Yeah, I mean, is there another way? Oh, yeah, there's.. there's a lot of other ways. This is the best way, though. It's funny because actually, first, I think our introduction was through Brad Robinson. Originally, I had heard about you, but we had actually never, because we haven't worked together yet. And we, you were doing a trip to Hawaii to kind of really talk about.. I'd love to know a little bit more about that trip. I, as like my wife, would have shot me for sure. I just come back from Costa Rica from Curious Builder boot camp, and it's like three days later, Brad's like, "Hey, can you go to Hawaii? I'm like, "Yeah, I would literally be over my dead body. But it was cool because I got this. I referred Stacey Eckman, so he came. He's one of our collective members. Tell me a little bit about.. I don't totally understand what the goal of that event was, and I wasn't there, so I haven't really been able to see some of the video, but I think it kind of coalesces with what you said, of like just wanting to work with people and spend time with people you enjoy spending time with. Is that, is that kind of the core part of
Tyler Webster 02:10
it? Yeah, so there's probably a longer version to this, and I'll try and keep it somewhat short, but I'm at the point in my career where I'm over the transactional type of business, where I scratch your back, you scratch mine, you know, I do something nice, and I expect you to buy something from me. Now, don't get me wrong, I'd love to take your money and sell your products, but last year we were talking about, like, what are we trying to achieve in building community, because that's really important to us, is that not only do people get to know us as individuals, but get to know our products, get to know what we offer to the marketplace, and we were sitting down and having a brainstorming session, and, and in my past life, we'd brought a lot of people into a location, right into our corporate office, and we had trained them, educate them, show them a good time, and, and I thought, you know, ever since Covid, people have, like, had this, this yearning for connection, getting together, doing things, and and so we came up with this crazy idea that, hey, we're going to do something in a really cool place and invite some really cool people to go do a project with our products, and then spend a couple days having fun, and it all came together perfectly. So, you know, it's all about building those, those lasting connections, and so we thought about, like, who do we offer, who do we service, right? Our business is really focused on three main channels, and our bread and butter for the last 20 years has been retail, right. We have a retail product that's sold into the big box retail, Home Depot, Lowe's, Floor Decor, and we have this this group of DIYers, these content creators that love our product, then their posts typically, typically have gone viral when they've done something really cool, like a patio floor, or you know, a fireplace, or a backsplash, and it's the products made for ease of installation, and so we picked two of two of our content creators who have done a project or two with us and have quite a large following, and we say, hey, look, we're going to go do a project in Hawaii for a local law enforcement officer, we're going to put up a brick wall in his, in his home gym, and we want you to come out, we're going to, we'll pay for the camera crews to be there. We'll do content that you guys can post. We're gonna post it as well, but just come have a good time, and we'll do, you know, give a little bit back to someone who serves our communities, right. And then we thought, you know, as we just launched our real efforts into the residential builder space. Like we need to have some cool home builders come out, right? So, obviously, we got connected with Brad through a crazy marketing connection, and anyways, so..
Mark D. Williams 05:11
oh, that was with Copper Creek,
Tyler Webster 05:14
Copper Rock Market,
Mark D. Williams 05:15
Copper
Mark D. Williams 05:15
Rock. I, by the way, Elias just had to say hi. I literally just got off the phone with him. I totally forgot about an hour ago, and I said I'd never met him before, and wow, is that guy a sharp cookie? And Brad's saying his praises, I had no idea. I thought he was in the southeast. He's like, "No, I'm in Salt Lake. I was like, "Oh. It's like, "Yeah. I said, "Do you know Tyler? He's like, "Yeah, I, you know, whatever. And I know him very well. I'm like, "Always covered on the podcast like an hour. So I forgot. Now this is my chance to give you a virtual high from Elias, so that's so funny. What a small world.
Tyler Webster 05:43
Yeah, Elias is great. He's, he's been a guest on our podcast here at Old Mill, and he's doing some great things, and I know that Brad sings his praises, like you said, and is really for how young he is. The dude's wicked smart.
Mark D. Williams 05:57
Oh yeah,
Tyler Webster 05:58
and so, yeah, so we got introduced to Brad, and poor planning on our part, because we were trying to throw this together last minute, and one of my favorite, and we even got into it, but one of my favorite quotes in the book that you had me read is like the most important, important plant part of every plan is planning on that plan not working out,
Mark D. Williams 06:20
Eisenhower had something like that in World War Two. I don't think that was in the book, but basically, like something like, no plan ever works out, but I found planning indispensable to success. I think that was another World War Two quote,
Tyler Webster 06:30
or the Mike Tyson quote. Everyone has a plan to, like, oh
Mark D. Williams 06:33
yeah, that's a solid one.
Tyler Webster 06:36
You know, at last minute we were scrambling to get, like you said, Stacey there, and what a great guy. So we had this dynamic of two DIY content creators and two custom home builders, and you would think, like, why they don't mesh, they don't jive, right? But the conversations we had at dinner, and on these events, and putting up the brick wall, it was so inspiring to see just the amount of collaboration that can happen, right? So we're sitting around after dinner one night, and it's just so fun to watch these businesses grow from really these girls wanting to just beautify their home, not having a lot of money to do it, but finding cool ways, and now they've got, you know, a million plus followers, they're growing these businesses, so we're having conversations like LLC creation and legal and tax strategy, and like, so you've got Brad and Stacy on one hand, who've been running businesses for a long time, asking questions about how they improve their social media content and growing followers and how to create hooks and content that really engages with people and you've got these new business owners asking these home builders about, hey, how do we, how do we think about this. We had some great conversations about, like, hiring an assistant, right? So I know you've, we talked a lot about Dan Martel's book that you guys talked about in another podcast, but like it was so fun just to be in the room with some great people, and you know, there's still a text string all these months later that we all are like interacting together, and it's it's really opened my eyes to how important relationships are, not just in helping each other grow, but like in making the job fun, right.
Mark D. Williams 08:27
Well, I think when people enjoy what they're doing, they work harder, they work better, they work more efficiently, and they can work longer. I mean, I, you know, I gave a keynote speech at Contractor Coalition about boundaries create freedom, and it's a little bit different topic than what we're talking about, but you know, if you don't protect your time, like we have in our contracts with our clients, like you know, we don't work nights, we don't work weekends. I want to protect my team, like text messages, you know, you can't text the team, you know, change orders, you know, we have actually, we've changed it, where I took this from Brad Levitt, down in Arizona, we have a fun text thread, so we literally call it fun text thread, and the point is, is if it's not fun, it doesn't go in the text, like you can't be it, all it is is for pictures, it's like everyone has like a family text with their whole family, right, it's like you text pictures of your kids, it's kind of like that, we're just taking pictures of the homes, but where I'm going with this boundary thing, and like freedom is like when you come to work Monday, and like you're excited to work like that is replicable for years, decades, a career, like I couldn't. Can it's different when you have the ornamentality, because we're driven by a lot of different things that we often aren't aware of, especially when we're younger. Maybe when we're older, we start getting a little bit more self-reflective. I think it's on us too, too. I'm not good at this. I'm still in the discovery phase of, like, I sometimes don't know what my team needs, because I know what motivates me, but I think it would be a mistake as an owner of a company to assume that what motivates you is what motivates your team. So, here's a shocker: ask them. Shocker, news alert. You know, if you ask them, they might actually tell you, but I think what you're doing with these groups and. We've seen similar success, and you know, curious builder boot camps, on a camp, it's just getting people in a different environment to realize, like, hey, I'm a human, you're a human, what do you struggle with? And I personally, on this podcast, while I want this to be something that educates and entertains, like, I want to be authentic and real, because, honestly, who likes fake conversations? I don't. I'm in sales. My stereotype on sales is, and this is what Jared was here. He could laugh. Is that, you know, we're we can fake it with the best of them, because we're used to doing that stuff in sales, and not that I don't love sales. I love the art of a sale, but, like, I want real. I want to, that I want just something that's real, and I don't care what it is. That's why, like, I don't care if I interview someone who is like, you know, I've had a couple deck builders on, and honestly, their stories are amazing. You know, we've had people on that have 1000s of employees, their stories amazing. I actually don't care, I just like that you're real, that's what matters to me. And I feel like what you're doing with these groups is just getting real people together and just kind of watching what happens, and it's pretty powerful.
Tyler Webster 10:57
Thank you. You know, it's it's for someone like me who likes to be behind the scenes, right. My career has always been one of, like, hey, I don't want the limelight, I'm happy doing the work and getting things done, and have high expectations for myself and for my teams, but this has been something that stretched me in the last couple of years, and you know, having a good, a good team around me to, hey, say, Tyler, you need to, you need to think about some things a little bit differently has been, it's been super helpful, and something you said really resonated with me. I don't know if you follow Gary Vaynerchuk, from,
Mark D. Williams 11:33
I mean, I know who he is, I don't, it doesn't, he doesn't come up as often, maybe once or twice a month, I'll see something pop up on my feed,
Tyler Webster 11:40
I just love what he said about, like, your job as a leader is to work for your people, right? And he makes it a practice where he meets with everybody in the company, and he asks them, What are you motivated by? What do you want out of this? And some people are motivated by money, some are motivated by title, some are motivated by freedom, right. And how do you know what that is until you sit down and actually have those real conversations, so super super impactful, and I think I take that we try to take that a step further and understand from our customers and these people we're building relationships with, what do you guys, what are your challenges, what do you need from a supplier, what can we do to simplify your life, and if we can help, we help. If not, we get them in contact with someone that, that potentially can. So that's been really fun for me, and you know, meeting a lot of the same people in the circles that you run in with are is just making those connections, and so you know that's that's fulfilling to me as well.
Mark D. Williams 12:38
I think I mean, business is hard. We're in particularly, I think, a difficult business, construction, building, supply chain management. I mean, honestly, I think it's a little bit like the grass is greener. I think, regardless of where you find yourself, life, life is hard, and I think that's why, as you get older, I think you gravitate towards people that are just real about it, because, like, I think we all know we're wise enough now, hopefully, that we realize there's no one pill, there's no Willy Wonka pill, you know, that's like the one thing that solves everything. And so, but I think the journey is really interesting too. It's like I wouldn't trade it. I've never.. I always say I've never been bored. I mean, I've worked hard, it's been difficult. It is difficult, you know. Some days are great, some days are hard, but like it's never boring. And for me personally, like boring is like a slow death. I couldn't, you know, I give all the credit in the world to people that, you know, started their career entrepreneurial journey later in life. You know, I interviewed someone their day, they had several children, they just really hated their job and their spouse. So many spouses out there are the reason we have, I mean, we go way deeper on this too, but on a business level, even like there are a lot of spouses out there that had their spouses back, so that they could go start a business. I know husbands that support their wives that want to be designers. I know wives that support their husbands that want to be builders, or whatever it is. It's just like that's why I said spouse is spouse, because when you have that support to go, you know, cut off the strings that you know, you quit a six figure job and go launch a business where you're making $10,000 It's like, wow, that is way riskier than when I, when you're 23 and you have no idea what risk is, and no kids. It's like, man, worst case scenario, you go sleep on your parents' couch, it's really not that bad. And so I just love hearing people's journeys. I mean, it's pretty much why I love this podcast so much, is everyone's experiences are just delightful to sort of hear and and learn from.
Tyler Webster 14:26
Yeah, I think that's why you have a lot of people who are interested in your podcast, because these conversations are so relatable. I think we all have a little bit of those experiences in our own lives, and it makes it makes it fun to hear other people express those as well.
Mark D. Williams 14:41
So, question for you, we're kind of dive in a little bit, but give some people a little bit of background if they don't know who you are, and we'll spend maybe the second half of the hour talking about, you know, the psychology of money. This is one of the last interviews in Q about it, and really, you're in a unique position. I've been very excited about this, because so many of the people I interview are small, if. Only led either companies in the obviously building design architects, all that thing, but you, we haven't had a lot of manufacturers on, and I'd love through this, through the thread of these conversations, I'd love to get some of your insight of what we could learn from bigger companies, because I think sometimes a lot of smaller companies look at bigger companies with almost a little bit of disdain, if you will, like, oh, they're a big conglomerate, or they're big, but you know, when you.. I've met some.. I met the CEO of Pentair the day, a Fortune 500 company, like the coolest guy, like so cool, and like I think that's the whole thing, when you actually meet people, kind of like your trip, where you like.. I mean, you could be, they're just fascinating people, and you're like, I, it'd be daunting to build a company with 10,000 employees. Like, I know, thank you. I have so much respect for someone that wants to do that or has done that. But where I'm going with this, I think there's something we can learn from each other, and I'd love to really get your experience. In particular, I'll ask a lot of questions about, like, management, and one of the big things here is how you've slimmed out your supply, or sorry, your dependence on suppliers, because I think that's something that, as builders, we sometimes rely on just one cabinet shop or one painter, and then we often don't think, well, what happens if that guy gets sick or disabled or retires, and then we're like, I really should have been spent, because I like to think that it's loyalty, but sometimes it's actually extreme risk, because if you are just loyal to one supplier, and then, and you still have your customer who you need to be loyal to, and that supplier goes down for whatever reason. I think COVID exposed a lot of that. Anyway, sorry, that's a terribly framed question, but basically that's where my mind is at, especially given your background. So, I'll shut up and let you explain a little bit what you do, high level, and then let's talk a little bit about that question.
Tyler Webster 16:43
Yeah, sure. I think a lot of my framework, Mark, comes from my upbringing on a potato farm in Idaho. All right, my dad's a fifth generation potato farmer, and you know, growing up in that unique environment, we, you really understood risk and luck, which I think are two concepts in the book that are quite interesting, but you can do everything right, you can get the right seed, you can get the right fertilizer, you can apply water at the right time, right, you can, you can do all these things right, and then it's time to harvest and a frost comes in, or a hailstorm comes and knocks your grain down, right. The luck just took, took out all that preparation, and so for me, running a business, you have to look at it from what you can control and what you can't control, right. There's always these, my team, we're always talking about, you got to control what you can control, and where I'm going with this is like you've got to put money in the bank every day, so that if your luck runs out, you're not devastated, right. We saw many family farms go under because they were too highly levered, they were dependent on that year's crop making money to pay back the bank, and then to go into more debt next year, and you know, I'm grateful for my dad and grandpa and uncle, who ran a business not to show how much money they could make, because I think I grew up thinking I was poor, right, which is an interesting thing to think about. We didn't go on fancy vacations. My dad was super busy all summer, so I never really saw him as a little kid. And it wasn't until I was 1011, that I could go and work during the summer that I saw, you know, really what my dad was all about. And they saved, right? They saved for the rainy day. They put in the work, and they didn't drive the fancy pickups. They didn't come around and buy big houses. They saved, and what that taught me was number one, I wanted to be a farmer. My dad said no. He said, you got to go get a college and get a real job, because I'm there's just too much risk in farming, but what it taught me was you got to put away for the rainy day, and it's like when I'm running old mill, it's different than just putting money in the bank, it's making investments in people, making investments in processes, making investments in software in those relation customer relationships, and you got to put money in each of those accounts every day, so that when something does happen, right, when your luck runs out, you're not devastated, and so you know, I think a good example of that is you mentioned this supplier concentration risks that I inherited when I started three years ago, and it was scary, right? My early career was in consulting, and I was all about risk mitigation, right? I helped companies that were getting ready to go public eliminate risk from their business. Risk from financial performance or operational risk, and this coming into old mill, and understanding that we had such a high concentration of one supplier, you know, it, the red flag, the lights were going off, sirens were going off, and, and I didn't really understand the business good enough to make any quick decisions, so my first thing was we got to number one, understand the rules by which we were playing. Right, this game of business has unwritten rules, and you have to understand what those are, and every business is different
Mark D. Williams 20:42
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Tyler Webster 21:46
And really, we're not even to where we want. We want to be, I think, for us the ideal number is less than 20% dependent on one supplier.
Mark D. Williams 21:54
Wow,
Tyler Webster 21:54
and that's, and that's in a comp, in a business where we are held to really high standards, like the big box retailers, they require sometimes a single day turnaround time from the time we get their order till we ship, and so having a secure source of supply is vital, because those fines that they charge you are astronomical. If you're a day two days late,
Mark D. Williams 22:18
does that mean you have to have inventory of that ready to go, like you can't possibly make the thing in that one period of time, so you have to anticipate the flow rate of certain product lines, like you, there's no way, obviously, custom, that'd be absurd to do that, so like I assume you're just noting certain product lines, and then you're back filling that to make sure you have extra,
Tyler Webster 22:38
yeah, so our strategy, when I came on board, understanding this risk was there's two, there's a two-pronged approach, right? The first is building up your inventory, right, and the inventory methodology that they followed before was just in time, make to order, so there was very little on the shelf from an inventory perspective, and so what we started doing is started building up a four week supply.
Mark D. Williams 23:06
Sorry, another question. Curious builder, walk through the pros and cons there of in time manufacturing, because I remember when I was in business school, you know, that was a big thing in the late 90s, and a lot of companies do that now. I know the con, I'd love to hear in your words, like what are the pros and cons of in time manufacturing.
Tyler Webster 23:23
Yeah, just in time is, in theory, it's great. It means that you are reducing your the time between when you give out cash and when you can collect cash from your customer, and you're eliminating carrying inventory, carrying costs of having all those expenses of having more warehouse, more employees moving product around, the chance of obsolescence or damage, right, just in tenants means that you're just getting it and you're turning it around and you're selling it, and so there's not, you're limiting a lot of that risk in the middle.
Mark D. Williams 23:55
And what kind of metrics can you like speak to, or is every business so different that it's not worth really getting into that, like you know what I'm saying, like, is it because you could. There are some companies or some online presence that they never even touch it, right? You order it, they order it somewhere else, and they send it, so they actually never held it. But then, obviously, if you're in manufacturing, you're using all your various supply partners, you're creating something, so it has to be in a warehouse, warehouse somewhere, and then you ship it from there, like, what is, like, uh, what is, what would be a normal time? Just speak for your industry. What was it, and what is it now today?
Tyler Webster 24:31
Yeah, like you said, everybody's a little bit different. In my experience, what we look at from a metric on a manufacturing side is inventory turns, how many times a year are we turning over the complete inventory, and a seven to 10 times turns is great for a manufacturing company like us. When you're dealing with, we have over, you know, 2000 SKUs that we could potentially run through our warehouse, and so having, you know, that. Inventory moving through on a consistent basis, right. Really, every every month, the to month and a half is really good. Now, for a smaller company with smaller SKUs, you'd want to see those that terms go up, and it really depends on how much value add has to go into that product, right. We buy thin bricks from manufacturers all over the world. Now we bring those in, we add value, we put them on our patented wall systems, and then we ship them out. And so there is time to process, there's time to cure before it can, it can actually be shipped. And so for us it's like that inventory turns is something I hold my ops guys really accountable to, and also the sales team, to make sure they're giving good forecasts.
Mark D. Williams 25:46
You know, it's funny, I've never thought about this, but I think it's applicable. I was never a server, but I've always been kind of interested. I think I could last one day as a server in a high-end restaurant, and then I get bored. But you know, they talk about turning tables, because if a restaurant can turn, you know, five tables in a three hour period, or whatever, they're just obviously making the kitchen more money. Is that a similar with that analogy? Check out for manufacturing.
Tyler Webster 26:07
Yeah, it's a similar to similar approach, right? You're, you're eliminating some of the extra cost for us. It's a little bit different. How do we generate more sales versus, you know, getting more people through a restaurant? I guess it's the same type of idea, you know, the more people, more seats you can fill, the more orders we can ship out, the more money we can make, and if we can shorten the amount of time between cash outlay and cash collection, you know, we make more money.
Mark D. Williams 26:35
I remember just because it was relevant during Covid, you know, window companies, in particular, were like 1214 1627 weeks, which is crazy, and so the way we responded as a home building industry is I remember signing a contract and ordering windows like the day you sign a contract, before I even had like permit or anything, like whatever I could do to order windows, and I'd ask the client, like I need, you know, this is before I knew to collect 10% down. This is well before that. I would say I need 250,000 because I need to order windows as soon as you sign this contract. My next call is to that was just a factor of Covid, but I found out later it was just really interesting that you would order windows from, let's say, a national distributor, or whatever, that these winners are coming from, they get, they get into the process, they pay the local company pays the national company within like seven or 10 days, I'm pretty fast. Then it takes 20 weeks to, so they've lost their money cap for this order, it goes and it sits in their warehouse, now the builder's not ready, they just ordered early, and the, and this happened to all window manufacturers. It wasn't just one, and they would sit on these windows for weeks, months, hopefully not years, and the amount of money they lost just holding these windows, because the builder wasn't ready for them. They knew they had to order, and at that time, no one was really understanding that, like, you, if you, because they're not made, you're made to a window order to be shipped and installed, not sit in warehouses, and so I knew a company that was buying warehouses just to house all these windows, because they had to meet the demands of their clients. Now, kudos to them, they were doing whatever it took to make their clients happy, but man, they lost a lot of money, and there was no way for them to recoup that money either. Now they've learned a whole bunch, COVID taught so many people so many different things, but that was just a real applicable story of just like what happens if on the other side where you overproduce and you've got to hold it for a while, that's not fun either,
Tyler Webster 28:29
you know, and we, we ran into that issue, my predecessors had a huge problem during Covid, when I got, when I started in January, we had a 50 truck backlog with Floor Nicore, they needed 50 truckloads of product to be shipped, and is because our supplier put them on allocation during COVID, because they couldn't get enough people in the warehouse to make the product, and you know that was that was a huge risk for the company, and it turned out to really bite us, in you know, my first year, and then another situation where the plant actually went down, they had to replace some robots in their the brick manufacturing line, and the project took twice as long as it was supposed to, and then they found out they had other issues with their kiln, and you know, we, we are pushing out our deliveries to our customers, and there's nothing we could do. So that was, that was really, you know, early in my, my tenure was something that really shaped my strategy in those first, that first year of, hey, we've got to fix some major problems and reduce and mitigate some of this risk, and that's why you know we're making those strides. Of my, I took her car marketing, and so he was the marketing and sales leader at that time. We went on a world tour, you know, we researched the best manufacturers around the world, and it. We went on site, inspected their, their method processes, looked at their quality control, looked at their delivery times, asked for reports on their, you know, past dues, and really understood that's that was really my background for a number of years of supplier vetting, and now we have vendors around the world that can help us in case something happens, and that diversification is just like one of those things we talked about before, putting money in the bank, getting enough suppliers to handle the global demand that we have. It was very.. it was vital to our survival.
Mark D. Williams 30:36
How did you.. how does one go about.. I don't spend too much more time on this, but because I do find this really interesting. How, but how does one go about going from 93% to 54 You're just finding basically, is it clay, is it actual manufacturers, because you still have your product lines that you're keeping. How do you decrease your dependence on 1234, individual supply bottlenecks, if you will?
Tyler Webster 31:00
Yeah, and it's really hard. It's a slower process, right? In three years, we've gone from 93% to the, you know, mid 50s, and that's that's frustrating that we're not at that 20% But another component of that is, you know, the business that we have with big box retail historically has made up 85 to 90% of our revenue, and of that 80 to 95 or 85 to 90% of revenue, three SKUs made up 70% of that revenue. So you have three colors that are mostly sold through Home Depot, Lowe's, and Floor Nicole, and those companies are so hard to change, it's like steering the Titanic, right? So, to get a new product approved takes potentially up to a year, because they have their standard process of, hey, we only introduce new products to our buyers in August, and then we'll pick the new products to go into effect in Q of the following year, so when you're so retail focused, like we have been in our history, it is a slow process to get these guys to even number one want a new color to see the benefit of having that, so it's a lot of conversations, education, and producing some really nice new colors with some of these new suppliers to get them to start buying right, and so it's a matter of trying to get colors that are closely matched. I went down this path, and I wasted probably six to eight months trying to match our number one color right, because our supplier had such a hard time manufacturing that that product during all their issues, so we went out to others, said, "Hey, how close can you get to this, right? Because it's not like steel, where I can go and say, 'Hey, give me an AR 500 piece of steel, and everybody knows the spec, and any steel manufacturer can make it. This clay literally is being dug out of the ground in a proprietary area, part of their, the part of the country that they own, they have their own recipe. The heat at which they cook it, at the other elements that they put in to add the different colors, it's impossible to mimic and to imitate. So, you know, after we had that was futile, right? Trying to match, and so we really just had to go slowly and introduce new colors, and and convince our partners that they should hold and add new SKUs to their their portfolio.
Mark D. Williams 33:30
What you know based on this last question, maybe on this is as you look at smaller operations like myself or design firm or architecture firm, what are.. how would you do? You think it's higher level, like think about your dependence on one person, because I choose, for instance, as a general contractor, I'm not holding any inventory, but mine is more relationships and more people. So, how do you, how do you go about diversifying your dependence on one subcontractor or one trade partner? And why should you do it, and how do you do it? I guess is my question to someone who has a lot more experience in this field than I would.
Tyler Webster 34:07
Yeah, you know the way I look at what, what you, your challenges, and other home builders, they're a little bit different, but very similar, and I would say where I need 10 suppliers, you maybe just need a primary and a secondary, and you have great relationships with them, and you're buying 80% of the volume through your primary and 20% through your secondary, so that in a moment of need you're not starting from scratch, right? And then it's like we've talked about before, it's all relationship is that A or B vendor, do they know that that you're going to pay on time? Do they know that you're going to do what you say when you say, and building those, those relationships, and always having a backup is what I would say is probably the most relevant for that group.
Mark D. Williams 34:54
I mean, I agree, I think so much of it is relationship, it's kind of like you don't realize until it's broken or it's frayed, and sometimes. Think this may be just for myself. I say we when I mean me, you know, it's like you, you know, you have a dependence on someone, and I, and I like, I just like a longer, deeper relationship. I like what, what it yields. I like the relationship in terms of the fruit it produces, in terms of I know what they expect, you get to know their kids, their family. It's just a deeper back to your earlier, the first thing you said, it's not transactional, it's a deep relationship with someone else, and you, but there are times I think you know, I look back in my career now, there are subcontractors and trade partners that are no longer with me today, for maybe two reasons: one is they aged out and they sold their businesses, so that's just a natural progression, to their skill level was no longer able to translate to the level that I've, you know, sought after, and where my clients have sort of taken me, and three, you know, there's just there may be a clash of personalities, or they're not willing to change, and I think we also have to, as owners, have to look at it ourselves too, like, is the, you know, is our, is our vision for what we want to do the wrong one? Do we even know what our vision is? I think for a long time, you know, my, I give my wife a lot of credit. She, every time I've rebranded the company, her aunt, her line of thinking was always the same, and I give her a lot of credit. Now, I love brand, but I didn't know what that was 1015, years ago. Now, I talk about it all the time, but her comment was, is you're building homes, and they're not in alignment with your brand anymore, meaning like I had actually the sophistication of the homes that I was building was superior to the brand I had built, and brand is more than a logo, and it's really like how you present, how you show up, and so it's like for me, I was just when you're in it every day, you're doing what your clients want, and I was good at that, but like, your, as your clientele gets more sophisticated, as your product gets more sophisticated, now your brand no longer really represented, it'd be like a, it'd be like a four to f1 50 trying to act like a Ferrari, they're just totally different cars, it's not like one is better than the other, because both are great in the right purpose, they're just different, and I think, I think the more, as owners, we, we question and self-reflect, and kind of get that space away from our business to look at ourselves, our goals, our aspirations, and our own company's trajectory, and say, what are we, what are we becoming, what do we want to become. I mean, it becomes a little philosophical, and I, I think just even me talking out loud makes me want to, like, pause a little bit and think a little bit about it. I mean, I'm so deep on Misa, who's that, had you know, my speck home here in Minneapolis is like that has really been sort of the epitome of like how I've gone through this process, and it's left me energized, also drained, uh, excited, but tired, and like, but now I know kind of what I want to do, but I had to kind of go through that process of self-reflection to get there,
Tyler Webster 37:40
yeah, and it's, it's a journey, right? If you think you can figure this out in a day, you're crazy.
Mark D. Williams 37:46
True enough. Let's go with, let's, let's dive into the book a little bit, since I made you read it, and you read it. What a good, what a good student.
Tyler Webster 37:55
I've loved the book, my two, my two boys read it, because I wish, I wish I would have read it as an 18 year old.
Mark D. Williams 38:01
I bought 12 copies. I don't have any copies left. I keep giving them away to people and writing my new favorite. They actually wrote a book. Have you read Dirt Baked Billionaire?
Mark D. Williams 38:12
No.
Mark D. Williams 38:12
Okay, I'm gonna send it to you. Seeing your mountaineering picture in the background, and it's basically the story of Ian Shevard, the owner of Patagonia. And let me send you a copy. It's my other favorite book this year. Anyway, going back to the psychology of money, and shout out to Tony Kacanda, who I run with. He's the one that told me to read the book last year, and I can't stop talking about the book. It is so good. Before we go there, though, that was our teaser. I always usually start the kind of this part of the podcast with a question from the previous guest, who happened to be Casey from Raycon Construction out in Salt Lake. So this was, he didn't know who the guest was, but here, his, here, his was his question after we went through the book. What does enough mean to you,
Tyler Webster 39:00
man? That is a deep question, right now. I think there's a couple different perspectives, and let me give you maybe my business enough first. You know, that's a tough question, because we are private equity owned, right? And so enough is whatever the shareholders tell me is enough, right, which from a financial standpoint, that's that's a tough, tough situation, but I think for me enough is progress year over year. Are we growing? Are we improving relationships? Are we forming new ones? Are the customers happy? Are my employees happy, and enough for me. Also, is that we're recognized by the industry as helping provide beautiful, authentic, real, beautiful spaces where people work and live.
Mark D. Williams 39:55
That's a great answer,
Mark D. Williams 39:59
I. If
Mark D. Williams 40:09
you're looking to level up your business in 2026 and beyond, the Contractor Coalition Summit is the place for you. If you've been a listener to the show, you know that this has been the single biggest factor in how I've leveled up over the last couple of years has had a huge, profound impact on my business, my personal life. It's what helped me launch the Curious Builder. In fact, our second event of the year is a little change, september 15 in Minneapolis. We are doing a one-day event, so for the last four years we've always done three day events, sometimes four day events, and we wanted to recognize that it's a significant investment in yourself, which is definitely worth every penny. I've talked many, many times about that, but for some people it's just out of reach. So we wanted to do a one day crash course event. Obviously, we can't cover all that we can cover in a four day event, but this will be a major, major upgrade to whatever you are doing, if you haven't been to one. So, that'll be september 15 in Minneapolis, and then our last one of the season will be another three, four day event in Charlotte, North Carolina. All the details can be found at Contractor Coalition summit.com Let's go personal, because I have a feeling this is going to be just considering some of our sauna conversations we had. I'm very curious on your answer on this one. What does enough mean to you personally? And I think I'll let you define it. I'm not going to put boundaries on it, because I don't think Casey had boundaries on his question either. What does enough mean to you personally?
Tyler Webster 41:40
Yeah, this is one that has changed over time. Right, I've got three kids. My oldest graduates from high school next week. We've got a 15 year old son and a 12 year old daughter, and most of my enough revolves around them and my wife. Right, and enough for me looks like I can leave work on a Thursday afternoon to make it to my son's game and be there for him or to take a couple days off and take my daughter to a dance competition, even though I hate dance, right, she loves it, and I just love this concept of being having enough to do what I want when I want for as long as I want, right? I think that was a that resonated me with me so much from the book, and I don't know what that enough, what that number is like. If you asked me $1 now, so I wouldn't know today, but you know I'm, I'm getting to the point where that might be closer than it was five years ago, but being present for my family and also engaged in energetic at work, right? I want to love my job, and the last three and a half years have been so different compared to my previous almost 20. I got to a point in my career where I had the Monday blues, Sunday I turned into a monster. I hated the way I was, you know, I could look like subconsciously I knew that I was gonna have to go battle for another week, and I just turned into a jerk to the people that mattered most. And so another caveat to that, enough is working in a place where I have enough control over what we do, how we're doing it, and who we're doing it with.
Mark D. Williams 43:41
I mean, phenomenal, phenomenal answer. One of the, I think, was early on in the book. Remember the part about financial? If you keep moving the goalpost, you know, you could pick a number. Let's just, for the sake of this, let's just pick a random number. So, it's like, let's say your goal financially was to get 5 million in your lifetime, and then you get 5 million. You're like, of course, human nature, it doesn't talk a lot about human nature in the book, but I kept thinking about the Bible, and I kept thinking about this insatiable desire that, like, your human nature cannot be satisfied. I think that's why the, it's not that money is evil, but the love of money, it says, is the root of all evil, and, like, I think if we lose perspective, like, money is, money is just a tool, like anything else, it's a, it's a tool that allows us the freedom to do the things we want to do, and any tool out of its place can be difficult anyway. Without going too far down that rabbit hole, the book was basically like, hey, but if you get to 5 million, rather than being comfortable, usually what happens is your expenses expand, your lifestyle goals expand, and now that mark, which you were, you know, when you had, when you had $1,000 to your name, 5 million sounded like King Midas, man. I mean, oh my word. And then you get there, and you're like, now it's 10 million, and you just, you just keep moving this thing. And here's the thing, you're in a whamster, a hamster wheel that you can't ever get off of. And I found that was really liberating to kind of think about, especially in light of Casey's question, like, what is enough? And then. How do you build sort of your life around it? What, when you read that part of the book, what, how did it impact you?
Tyler Webster 45:07
Honestly, at first I was embarrassed, because I have moved that goal post many times, and as you continue to progress, and you're able to make more money and save more money, you obviously like, unless you're really disciplined, you know, that that family vacation in Hawaii sounds really good, or that new truck, man, I would really like to have that, and you know, it's it's made me be, you know, in the last couple weeks, it's made me be very much more disciplined on like the Amazon purchase. Do I really need that? Is this really something that's going to improve my life? And it's made me have conversations with my family about, hey, what do we really want to achieve here. And so, after I got over the initial embarrassment, it's.. it just motivated me to, like, hey, let's sit down. I actually sent my financial planner announced that, hey, let's get together. That's
Mark D. Williams 46:03
amazing.
Tyler Webster 46:04
We need to think about a couple of things a little bit differently, and potentially change how, how we're approaching what enough is. What does retirement look like?
Mark D. Williams 46:14
You know, it's funny that what I found interesting about the book is that so many of the topics were also so relatably easy. I remember Warren Buffett, like, what I've been saying this all the time now is like Warren Buffett, I think it was like the middle third of the book, where he is like people invest money that they can't afford to lose in things they don't believe in, that's stupid, and he goes, what they should do is invest money that they can afford to lose in things they do believe in, and you're like, when you just churn the sentence backwards, you're like, yeah, but yet that is common sense, that is not common at all. I was just like, to me, that was just like, I, my, I usually don't underline books. This book looks like a four-year-old wrote it with a highlighter. I mean, this thing is marked up to kingdom come.
Tyler Webster 46:57
Yeah, I think I need to read it four or five more times just to go back and capture some of those nuggets that I've missed, but yeah, mine's mine's the same way. I've got note pages of notes that I like to go home and talk to my 18 year old about, because he runs, you know, he has a little lawn mowing business, and he's not the best saver, he was when he was trying to save up for a truck, but now he's he's all about taking his girlfriend out or his motorcycle or having fun, and that that that concept of setting these goals and being consistent over a long period of time is really the secret sauce.
Mark D. Williams 47:40
Or remember what they said about Warren Buffett. I think his annualized returned, so he made, he made 65 billion after he was 65 He had 25 billion, and he, I loved how it said it, I think was 22% return, which is amazing, but it's the John guy was like 65% return, some no, 45 like wildly higher, but he was only worth, let's say, only worth like 10 billion, so not even close to Warren, and they said that Warren's his skill was investing, but his superpower was time, because he started in his 20s, and like, of course, we've all remember being in high school, or whenever we started doing it, you know, like a Roth IRA, right, and like you start that on early, but like, man, you can't ever go backwards in time, and I think it just is what is, wherever you are, like, start now, you know, and start with your kids, and like, you still have to live today. I remember my dad used to give me advice, like, you know, well, we certainly think about tomorrow, like, I mean, you might get hit by a car tomorrow, like, all this fine in, like, if you live like a popper your whole life, but then you also never enjoy it, or you never, I think that's why it's so subjective, like, what does enough mean to you? Like, I think it's very.. I think it has to align with your values, and so, like, how do those conversations go with your kids? I imagine as a dad, that's got to be actually really enjoyable conversations.
Tyler Webster 48:54
Yeah, yeah, sometimes talking to kids is like talking to a tree, but yeah, Dad, you're. yeah, Dad, whatever, but you know, someday they'll remember, and you know, at the same time, I've also thought a lot about my great grandparents growing up through the Depression and having to scrape every nickel together just to make ends meet, and you know, my great grandpa was sorry, give me a second. My light thinks that I'm not here anymore.
Mark D. Williams 49:25
That's funny.
Tyler Webster 49:25
My great grandpa had a service center, a tire center in a small Idaho town, and state lived in the same house for, you know, 60 plus years, didn't ever have a new car, but you know, when they, you know, when they passed away, they had a huge nest egg. Grandpa, why don't you go do something with that, right? But, but that was just their upbringing. They lived through that time where you didn't know what tomorrow held, and you saved and. I can really respect that, and I think about this concept of wealth versus being rich,
Mark D. Williams 50:08
right? Yeah,
Tyler Webster 50:09
the outward appearances don't always match what is reality.
Mark D. Williams 50:14
Well, remember the story, you can spend
Tyler Webster 50:15
money doesn't mean you have
Mark D. Williams 50:17
it long term. Yeah, remember the story about the chauffeur or the guy that the guy would, they called that guy, that the valet guy remember. So he was driving, driving the guy's Ferrari, and then the next week he shows up in like a Datsun, and it like basically had like a $200,000 Ferrari, but what he really had was a 200,000 IOU, and it repoed it. And to your point, like, especially I think we see it, it's very, I mean, it happens in construction too, but for whatever reason, I think of real estate agents - they're always driving new cars, they're always on a lease, you just have no idea, and it's not really any shame, it's just being aware of our human nature, and I, and I get there are certain things that you need to act the part, you know, if you're going to go into an interview, I just, I work with local high school kids once a year on different business projects, and the other day they all showed up in suits, and I said, 'Kudos to you guys. I said, I remember when people told me, you know, when I was interviewing way back when, that you know, you always dress one level above of whatever the expected attire is. And I said, you know, hats off to you guys, that's, you know, you're never going to be disrespectful because you, you know, you took the initiative to do a little bit more. I said, that's super cool. And so I don't want to discount the fact that there is, in order to do certain things, you do have to, I mean, you have to invest money. I'm totally fine with investing money. I think what we're maybe talking about, or round about, is how we think about money. Hence, the book, Psychology of Money. I think for me it was super cool just to sort of think about, just challenge your status quo, think about something before you do it. Doesn't, whatever your action is, at least you know what it is. Don't do it just because that's what you think other people should do. And so that's what I've sort of gotten holistically out of the book, is just just be a little, and I think it has to play to your personality a little bit too. Some people are very conservative by nature, that's fine. I know I personally have been, I wouldn't say held back, everyone's career is their own, but like I've been very debt averse for a long period of time, just because that's how, and I think chapter one was like the most significant way you view money is how your parents view money, which I thought was really interesting. If you were surrounded in a household where everyone gambled all the time, it has such an impact, obviously, on how you think about money, and we, my dad had a cash business his whole career, never borrowed money that I can really recall, and when I say that, like, you know, you might borrow money to build a house, but, like, there's limits to that, and I'm not saying we didn't take risks, but, like, I haven't done a spec home in 16 years, because I was just, I don't have that kind of money to invest multiple millions in a spec home, and yet now I'm at a point in my career where I like partnerships, so now I'm way more apt to like partner with somebody and partner with their liquidity with my knowledge. It doesn't seem as risky. Plus, honestly, I just like partnerships. That's how I've sort of reframed my thought around sort of risk. Are there any things that sort of challenged how you have thought about it after you read this book?
Tyler Webster 53:00
Yeah, it made me think a lot about, and I don't know if this is exactly where, where you're thinking, but it made me think about how I'm using the resources I have to make memories, right? Because I think that's, that's important, and you know, we made a decision as a family about 10 years ago, that we wanted to have a boat, and was it the perfect time to go buy a boat? Probably not, but I wanted to invest in those family memories, and I look back now, and I think about those summer days that we had the kids' undivided attention for hours at a time, and then laughing and goofing off, and just being kids and having fun, that yeah, could that have money been put in the into a savings vehicle that brought me a better return from a financial perspective? Yes, but I wouldn't trade that for the memories that we have, and so just being being smart with having enough, so that when you do want to go make those memories, you can do
Mark D. Williams 54:09
it. I love that. I love that experience trumps things. My wife is really big on that. It's funny because I think she might be a little too hardcore on it, because the kids are only like 10, eight, and six, and they still like things like Legos, and right now my boys are, they, whatever, they get money for their birthdays, or if they do little chores, we give them a little something, or whatever. And in Simon, my middle one, just love, I mean, he's really good at Legos, and he's just, anyway, he loves them, and he's like, "Dad, why can't I use my own money to buy Legos? And my wife is like, "No more Legos in this house, and and Simon is just beside himself, and he's not wrong, because he's totally logic. He's like, "Dad, what is the point of saving money if mom won't let me buy Legos with it? And I'm like, "This is the best year. I love this. I go, "Buddy, I don't know what to tell it. He goes, "Well, why is mom the boss of you? Why? I said, "Buddy, you're asking questions, you know, beyond what you and I can answer. I don't. We're gonna have to, we're gonna have to punt that up the chain, but I thought it was so funny. He's like, because he was asking me the other day, the little one, even the six year old, goes, "Dad, who's your.. is mom your boss? And I was just, "Oh man, I think every husband can sort of relate to this, and I was just like, "Man, at six years old he got that. I'm like, "Man, that's pretty funny.
Tyler Webster 55:17
Oh, that's awesome. You know, it's funny because kids have that, that need, and I think it's so good to teach them about money. I grew up with parents who were savers, and you know, there was - we had a rule, and it was - it was enforced pretty strictly on, you know, when we made money, or we got to get a gift, right? The first 10% always went to the Lord, religious family, and so you paid your tithing, and then whatever was left, half of that went to savings for school, and then whatever the other half you got to spend on whatever you wanted, and so it taught the discipline to be putting money away to be charitable, but also make sure you're saving up for something that you really want, and don't just spend it at every whim. So, some of us were better at that than others.
Mark D. Williams 56:07
I like that. That's actually very wise. I like also the simplicity of it. 10% 5050 left. It's funny, because I think what that's going to prompt me to do, that my kids just have little mason jars that they roll up there. In fact, it was funny, my daughter rolled up their day, she came down, and she had, like, a roll of 20. She, she's been exchanging her money for, like, the other boys, is like larger bills, so she just got, like, a fat wad of, like, hundreds and 50s. I'm like, "What are you, a gangster? And it's like wrapped in a rubber band. It's super funny. And, because, like, you know, even you're little, they get little ones, and I mean ones, when you know, if they're not rolled up, I mean, it just looks like, yet it looks like you're a millionaire, and you got, you know, 100 ones anyway. What I think this is gonna prompt me to do is, I'm gonna give them, I'm gonna do this this weekend, I'm gonna get them each three piggy banks, and we're gonna, I like the idea, we'll do 10% 5050 and you know, we'll let them come up with their own naming convention. But I like that it's actually, you know, what you really talked about. Have you ever read Profit First by Michael McCallowitts.
Tyler Webster 57:02
I haven't,
Mark D. Williams 57:03
so we won't go into it, because it's not the book right now, but actually just bought there's one called Profit First for Contractors, but Michael McCallowitz, he's run a number of really good financial books. We might, we'll probably use one of the books for next year's book sequence, but basically it talks about it from a business standpoint. I think it's five accounts, as I recall. You, when you get, let's say, just get $1,000 in, you know, you put, you just allocate these different, and you literally set up different bank accounts at your bank, you know. One would be for taxes, one would be for, and I'm sure in a corporate structure you have CFOs that do this, but the average entrepreneur does not. And so the idea is you're allocating ahead of time, you know. And then, but the idea that hence the name of the book, Profit First, because most people think profit is after I pay all my people, I pay all my bills, whatever's left is my profit, and you're always scraping by. I saw this great Instagram clip yesterday, and it was a contractor, and it says the life of a contractor. On Monday, I had $75 in my bank account, Wednesday had 765,000 in my bank account, Friday had 75 cents, like just the volatile trick. It was just so funny to be, because it was so relatable. Anyway, sorry that little tangent brought to you by ADHD. But going back to these accounts, but like pay yourself first, like set up a bank account, like if you know, and I think you can be, you know, let's say I don't know your business, but let's just say you're going for 20% margin. Be conservative, every check that comes in, don't take the full 20% that's too, that's too close. If you have anything go off, that's not right. So, to me, I would take 10% So, just take 10% of every check that you get in and put it towards your profit. Now, it's still, if you need to move it for whatever, I just, the book, that's the high level version of the book, but you know, there's, you know, payroll and overhead, and we've actually set up the accounts, you know, my controller now manages it. We still need to use the profit first, but even me, I'm guilty, even though I know it, I'm still not paying myself first. I, you know, obviously take my salary, but I need to do a better job of following that principle. But it speaks a little bit, anyway, of these three piggy banks that your parents taught you, because I think it's a great idea.
Tyler Webster 58:57
Yeah, and if it just becomes habit, just becomes second nature, and and then when rainy day comes, you've got funds to make it through.
Mark D. Williams 59:09
Have you? You said you bought two books for your boys.
Tyler Webster 59:13
I'm gonna get, make him read the one I have. Okay, now it's all marked up.
Mark D. Williams 59:16
Yeah,
Tyler Webster 59:17
but my oldest son, I just bought it on the audible version, so he's not a reader. I listen
Mark D. Williams 59:24
to it,
Mark D. Williams 59:24
I get it. All right, we're drawing at the end, only because I love talking about this stuff. You mountaineer, and you like to ski. What do you get out of that that you can sort of apply to your entrepreneurial self? Is it.. I know it probably does a number of things, but you know, you've got this beautiful picture of what mountain is that in the background? There,
Tyler Webster 59:43
the one in the middle is the Grand Teton.
Mark D. Williams 59:45
That's okay.
Tyler Webster 59:46
And the climber standing on top of the middle Teton, looking north towards the Grand.
Mark D. Williams 59:51
Okay,
Tyler Webster 59:52
that was my kind of backyard. We could see the Grand Teton from our house in Idaho, just across the Wyoming border. And you know, as a kid, I always. My dad would go climb it pretty much two or three times a summer with his friends, and I had this, this goal, like someday dad's going to take me. So, as I just remember as a little kid being devastated every year that I didn't get invited to go climb this mountain, and then, you know, I've done it a handful of times now myself, and between mountaineering and skiing and mountain biking, I just.. I love being outside. That's where I do my best thinking. Growing up as a kid, having to go pick sunflower weeds in the middle of the potato fields for days at a time, I had a lot of time to think right in nature, in quiet. And as I got older, then I was, you know, quiet time in a tractor all summer, and that ability to just to be alone with your thoughts is so powerful, and I think I do my best thinking outside. Some people say all their best ideas come when they're in the shower. Mine, mine come when I'm doing an early boot pack or an early skin session up in the back country on my skis, or I'm on a mountain bike ride, and that's that's just where I get my inspiration, and so if I'm not out in nature at least once or twice a week, I can feel like my battery just is depleted, but it also has this element of managing risk, right? These skiing, backcountry skiing, mountaineering, mountain biking, they all come with inherent risks, and it's taught me to like, how do you manage risk right through education, through preparation, through the right tools, and I can apply that same concept, and I do with my team at work, right? You can control what you can control in a backcountry skiing, for example. You can't control if the avalanche is going to go, but you can control when you go out and ski. Is the avalanche danger high? If it's high, then you don't go. And then you take the right tools. You have an Abby bag, right? You go with other people, you never go by yourself. You ski one at a time, right? There's these concepts, you stay off slopes that are more than 30 degree angles. There's all these things you can do to protect yourself, and in business it's the same thing. Right, you control what you can control. You can't always control what your suppliers are going to do, you can't control what your customers are going to do, but there's a handful of strategic things that you need to know, and you need to do them to stay safe, right? Whatever that means. And I love that just idea of risk mitigation, but also go for it. Go have fun, go do things that challenge you, and push you, and and stretch you, because that's how you, that's how you grow, that's how you, you become better.
Mark D. Williams 1:02:44
Do you have any big, you have any big goals this year, personally, that you're, that you're just really excited to fulfill, or maybe you've already done
Tyler Webster 1:02:53
it? I do, what I do have a goal, and that goal is to get to the top of the Grand Teton with my two boys and my dad.
Mark D. Williams 1:03:00
Oh, how old is your dad?
Tyler Webster 1:03:02
He turns 70 to 69 or 70 this year,
Mark D. Williams 1:03:07
so what, 16 pitches?
Tyler Webster 1:03:10
Yeah, I mean it's depending on which route you go. We'll do the Owens Spaulding route, where it's you do more hiking to the upper saddle, and then you know, you've got from that upper saddle up, it's about 700 feet of some climbs, it's not as pitch heavy as like the Exum Ridge,
Mark D. Williams 1:03:28
I think that's the one, my sister and I did it, I can't remember which one we were, whatever one had 16 pitches, that's the one we
Mark D. Williams 1:03:34
did, you
Tyler Webster 1:03:35
did the upper Exum,
Mark D. Williams 1:03:36
okay, yeah, she was the rock climber, I was the cleaner, so she, she did all the leading, I just lugged all the gear.
Tyler Webster 1:03:43
Good for you guys.
Mark D. Williams 1:03:44
Let's, you get to leave one question for the next guest. What question can be about any topic, anything? What would you like to leave for the next guest?
Tyler Webster 1:03:56
Yeah, this is.. I felt a lot of pressure, because I think Casey did a really good
Mark D. Williams 1:04:02
job. That was, I mean, you could repeat it. That was a great question.
Tyler Webster 1:04:06
How about this? I think construction building products, you know, our industry is so relationship-based, but we're feeling a lot of pressure right now with labor costs going up, schedules are tough to manage. Customer expectations are through the roof. What's one thing that you've learned that builds trust with either your builder that you work with, the contractor you work with, suppliers, or even customers? What is that one thing that you've done to build trust before there's a problem,
Mark D. Williams 1:04:42
that's a great question. I'm going to frame it. What is one thing that builds trust before it becomes a problem?
Tyler Webster 1:04:51
Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 1:04:56
thank you very much for coming on. Well, we forgot to even mention, I guess we'll mention it now. We've got the. Collectives come into Salt Lake City in August. Trapper Roderick from Roderick Builders and Stephanie Daley from Steven Daily Construction are going to be our ambassadors out there, and I think we're going to be hosting one of them in your showroom, if I'm not mistaken.
Tyler Webster 1:05:17
Yeah, I think it's november 13.
Mark D. Williams 1:05:19
Oh, you already got the date, solid.
Tyler Webster 1:05:20
Yeah, I was with Trapper on Tuesday, and we were talking a little bit about it. So,
Mark D. Williams 1:05:24
excellent, excellent,
Tyler Webster 1:05:25
yeah. We're happy to, excited to help promote and participate, and we love what you guys are doing with the Cures Pillar Collective.
Mark D. Williams 1:05:33
Well, we'd love it. We'll see you soon. Then don't think I haven't forgotten about our little yurt ski trip. I haven't decided whether we're gonna make that a boot camp invite only, or if I just have to figure out some way to get out to Salt Lake this winter. Although this was of all the winners to miss, this last one was probably the one to miss. Trapper was sending me the dirt skiing videos of people just going up Park City, and it was just dirt. So it was a pretty rough year out west.
Tyler Webster 1:05:56
Yeah, it was pretty miserable.
Mark D. Williams 1:05:57
Thanks for your time. Appreciate the audience's time every Monday, every Thursday. Thanks for tuning in the Curious Builder Podcast. 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 expand their business. Please share it with your friends, like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in.
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