Q & A Episode 25 - The Power of One: How One Scary Goal Can Change Everything in 2025!
Episode #25 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | The Power of One: How One Scary Goal Can Change Everything in 2025!
In this episode of The Curious Builder, Mark Williams dives deep into the idea of Misogi, a Japanese tradition of taking on one challenging task each year to shape the remaining days positively. Reflecting on his own past year and pondering goals for 2025, Mark emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries, facing fears, and striving for personal growth, while also keeping us excited about the upcoming Sauna Camp in Minnesota.
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About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Posdast is Mark D. Williams, the founder of Mark D. WIlliams Custom Homes Inc. They are an award-winning Twin Cities-based home builder, creating quality custom homes and remodels — one-of-a-kind dream homes of all styles and scopes. Whether you’re looking to reimagine your current space or start fresh with a new construction, we build homes that reflect how you live your everyday life.
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Mark Williams [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Curious Builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Before we get started, we are four weeks away from our first sauna camp in Minnesota. If you've been tuning into the show for a while, you realize that I love wellness. I love celebrating business owners and really want to celebrate their health, their wellness so that they can operate in the businesses that they have, support the families that they work so hard for, as well as their trade partners and their clients. And with that in mind, we are going to have a half day retreat at Lake Minnewasha in Minnesota on January 24th from 1:00 to 5:00. Dr. Mel Krug is going to lead 60 people through somatic breathwork in the lodge.
Mark Williams [00:00:35]:
Then we'll go down into the water. You're going to cold dip anywhere from 10 seconds to three minutes. Then you'll go into the sauna and then rinse and repeat. At the end we're going to have a Mediterranean wood fire grill meal together as a community and that's it. So if this is something that you want to do to kick off 25, center your new Year's resolutions around some new objectives, new communities and challenge yourself. Sauna camp is for you. All the details can be found at curious builder podcast.com welcome to the Curious Builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host.
Mark Williams [00:01:11]:
Today is Thursday and it is our q and a 20 minute session and I was asked a question as you come into the new year here. The close of 24 is what are the things that you're looking forward to doing in 25? And I've spent the last couple weeks thinking a lot about the things that have gone right this year, things that have gone poorly this year. And I was reminded of something I heard recently. It's a Japanese word called misogy. And so I've looked it up a little bit and I'm not ready to share what mine is for next year. But I've been thinking a lot about it. I know what it was for last year for me, but for those that aren't familiar with the term, it's basically the notion of asagi is basically something that you do that's hard one time of year, but it has an impact on the other 364 days out of the year. So put something big on your calendar that maybe scares you.
Mark Williams [00:02:00]:
And I think one of the three guiding principles of this is basically it should be something that you could fail at. It's not guaranteed success. So what, that maybe it's starting a new business Maybe it's a personal goal. Maybe it's running your first marathon, losing 20 pounds. I think each person has to define what they want that to be. And I didn't when I first heard this term. It was actually Jesse Itzler I was listening to, I think Living With a SEAL earlier this fall when he lived with the Navy seal. It's a fantastic book for those that haven't read it.
Mark Williams [00:02:34]:
And I didn't realize that I had actually been doing this principle for a while without realizing it. And last year it was really clear. I've talked a lot about it on the podcast, just because it's given a lot of. I think my favorite quote this past year has been boundaries create freedom. And in some ways, if you have a singular goal, it creates boundaries. Right now I'm in the middle of hard 75 with about 13 other builders across the country. And there's certain things you can and can't do those are boundaries. They create freedom.
Mark Williams [00:03:03]:
I don't have to think about maybe some things I'm going to eat or some things I'm going to drink, or what I'm going to do at 5 o'clock or what I'm going to do after I put the kids to bed, because I've already made the decision of what I want to do. And so in some ways, it becomes really clear. It becomes a habit. It becomes. In some ways, I'd say the principle is easy. The discipline is hard, hard. And I have personally found a lot of enjoyment in that, as well as a lot of focus. It allows me by focusing there, it helps me focus a lot more at work.
Mark Williams [00:03:32]:
It helps me focus and understand things that are the most important in my life, whether it's family, being present in the moment. And it doesn't mean that I don't fail at those things, but I think it allows me to practice discipline in one singular thing. And so last year for me, it was the 50 miler. I trained for a ultramarathon. All my neighbors and a lot of the guys that I hang out with have all done the 100, the Ironmans, and all that kind of stuff. So I was the new kid on the block. And I felt if I'm going to fit in with these guys, I got to commit. And so I.
Mark Williams [00:04:02]:
I learned a lot from that. And I didn't realize that it was really focusing on that one goal for six months that's shaped, really, the most of my year. And I'll look back on 2024 about that. And so it's Interesting. I'm going to take. We're going to shut down over the holidays. I'm going to take a family vacation and just spend some time thinking about next year. And I've mentioned this previously on a different podcast that I want to A good friend of mine basically wrote down the 40 things that informed his life to the time he was 40 and then he wanted to write 40 more.
Mark Williams [00:04:34]:
And I'm going to do that kind of within mind. And I wonder if looking back, if we find a lot of misogies in our life that we're not aware of. And sometimes I think they're choices, sometimes I don't think they. They're a choice, but they just happen to you. Like I think getting married is obviously a huge thing that happens in your life or has happened in my life, having kids, each one in some ways like defines that year. I think if I'm going to go back and look at dates, like off the top of my head, if I'm going to say a date, I'm going to say obviously the most important thing that happened that year was the birth of my daughter May or Simon or Tate or something like that. Because it's the rest of your year goes around that. And I think you can take this principle and apply it to your personal life.
Mark Williams [00:05:15]:
I think you could apply this to your business life and maybe they're one in the same. I think everyone has to tease that out for themselves. Certainly one informs the other. I think in terms, just reading here of some of the guiding principles of Masagi is that Maybe it's a 50, 50 chance that you make it. I think that this is more of a goal. Hopefully it's not 50, 50 chance whether your kid makes it with you as your parent. Basically, like you sign up for a race, whatever it might be, maybe you do the training and maybe a burnout. I think that's okay.
Mark Williams [00:05:43]:
I think understanding that there's a lot of lessons to be learned in the journey and I think that's true of starting a business. I think the last couple years now, even like the Curious Builder is obviously a new enterprise for us. It's two years and we keep innovating. This year we've added a ton of different things and I didn't really have a guiding principle to direct it. I now have much clearer idea of what I want the Curious Builder brand to be. The podcast is one of five or six different hubs, but it's really community. My goal is to educate and to communicate and to bring people together. That's the fundamental goal of why I'm doing the podcast, why I enjoy it, and what I seek to continue to do with it.
Mark Williams [00:06:22]:
I think the second principle is misogi what something that it should scare you a little bit. Maybe there's a hint of fear. I think when you're starting a business, there's always that fear of what if it doesn't work out. And spoken about that previously too, that I think for me, I think in 2008, 2009 and 10, realizing that failure was okay, and I've mentioned this on previous episodes, it was my dad who was a builder and entrepreneur for 30 plus years, who basically said, hey, if you fail, you declare bankruptcy, whatever happens, like that's not the end of the road. Like that's just, that's just a chapter and it can really help launch your next chapters. And I look you read a lot of biographies or memoirs of successful people, entrepreneurs, personal life, whatever it is, that there's a lot of failures before success. And it's. I think if you were to look back, I know for me, I've probably learned the most through the most difficult experiences.
Mark Williams [00:07:15]:
It's not that they've been the easiest. I can't say that I'm. I can say now in hindsight that I'm glad that I experienced them because it made me a better person, a better business owner, more aware. But I have a lot of growth. And I think if you don't have those scars, if you don't have that experience to grow, it's hard to keep improving without kind of those roadblocks, if you will. You have to figure out a way around them or a glass ceiling. I've been told before specifically about building that between 1012 million a year in revenue to get to 20 million is really difficult. I don't know if that's true in all the markets, but in Minnesota that was.
Mark Williams [00:07:49]:
Another builder shared that with me. And it's interesting as you bump against that ceiling. It's a staffing problem, it's a marketing problem, it's an office problem. It's how you scale your business is a whole nother thing. And I think every business, rather you're builder, remodeler, marketer, supplier. I think every, every industry has its little ceilings and how do you go through them? And I think those failures really help you evolve to the next, to the next generation or to the next level of what you're trying to achieve. I'm reminded of this thing about picking something that might scare you that you might fail at I think if you just pick easy goals it's. If you're just checking off a list, I'm not sure how much you're improving.
Mark Williams [00:08:27]:
But Alex Honnold is a famous rock climber and he recently was being interviewed and he had just mentioned that we don't do enough things in our life that causes genuine fear. And obviously he's a rock climber of extreme capabilities. And so he's maybe navigating fear in a lot different ways than some of us pedestrians would be. But fear is still relative. And I think his point was, and what he went on to say is that if you don't know fear, it's hard to know true joy or the depth of joy that could be there. And I guess I always think about and terms of like sports or pushing your boundaries or your limits. You might, for instance, running doesn't have to be death fear. Could you push yourself so hard that you faint or blackout or puke? I used to be a coach for a cross country running back and oh man, 15 years ago, 12 years ago, whatever it was.
Mark Williams [00:09:21]:
And we had this one kid, he was amazing but it's like his body knew he was going to war. Every single time he raced. He would, five minutes before the race he'd go over on, on, not on all fours but on his knees and he would just puke his guts out in the woods. And we often remarked on that. And then he would absolutely just go to war. But that was his body's way of knowing he was going to push it to his limits. And that's a very visual one that you can actually see. A lot of times I feel like when we push our limits we don't see it.
Mark Williams [00:09:47]:
We see stress, we see gray hairs as you get older, certainly see stress. Sometimes you see people put on weight. I've seen people lose a lot of weight due to stress and so I think stress causes a lot of different things. But I think this thing about scaring you, I think you can do it in a healthy way.
Karen Steckel [00:10:12]:
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Karen Steckel [00:10:44]:
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Mark Williams [00:11:08]:
Maybe you're a project manager working for another builder and you want it. You've been wanting to start a business for a long time. Maybe this is the year you find a road to do it. And yeah, it's scary. Starting a business is really scary. Maybe you're at year 25 or year 30 and you're thinking about retirement. That's scary. You've been building for decades.
Mark Williams [00:11:25]:
How do I unwind this? How do I shut it down? How do I transfer it on? If legacy is important to you, what does that mean? Mean? And so I think there's a lot of different things that we can use the second principle of Masagi with how does something scare us? And I'm excited to think about that. I have a pretty good idea of what I want mine to be, but I'm not. I'm still teasing out what I want it to be. So I'm not going to share it just yet. And then the third one is interesting. Misogy is just for you, it's not for anyone else. The whole thing here is to improve yourself. Maybe it's, maybe, maybe it's you're working on yourself.
Mark Williams [00:11:56]:
You hear that a lot. He needs to do some work on himself. And I think as we look in the mirror every day, change is slow. But when we meet people, maybe people only see us a couple times a year. And to them they're like, wow, a lot has changed in that person's life. But they don't know the hard work or lack of work that was happening in their life. And I feel like if you don't take control of the things that you want to take control of, I feel like life will do it for you. I think it's a little bit like akin to is the tail wagging the dog or is the dog wagging the tail? I think either way something's going to get wagged.
Mark Williams [00:12:29]:
But I think it'd be better if you were the dog waking your own tail versus the other way around. And so I, I like this. I think you can. Sometimes sharing a goal is important. I think there's some camaraderie in it. Depending on what the goal is. Sometimes they're deeply personal. I know some people, they're not, it's not my story to share, but they've wanted to do some things in their own personal life and they confided in me as a person, as a business owner and someone that they care deeply for and just said, this is something I really need to work on.
Mark Williams [00:12:55]:
And as their friend and someone that cares deeply for them, like, I want to do what I can to support them, but it's not my story to share and I don't think this even wants to share it. I think it's just for them and I think that's really cool about picking something that's self improvement, whatever that might be. Just because we have sauna camp coming up here at the end of January. Just thinking a lot about the wellness space and this morning I was just taking the kids to school and I was just thinking, my daughter's almost nine and they're healthy. We get to spend a lot of time together. And like any entrepreneur, you're, you're struggling. You're juggling 87 balls. Your personal life, your, your personal health, things that you want to do as a person, things to do as a business, things you want to do as a husband, things you want to do as a friend, things you want to do as a parent.
Mark Williams [00:13:39]:
And there's just never enough time. And it's hard to balance all those things. And I certainly would not consider myself even remotely competent in all those areas, but it just caused me to be reflective and I was just thankful for how healthy we are and that none of that is promised tomorrow. And I often, when I drop off the kids at school, we'll pray together in the car before they go into school. Anything's in the paper like a school shooting, and things like that seem so far beyond out of your control. And as a thankful parent, like, I just want to be thankful for the time that I have with my kids, with my family, with the people that I work with, people I care about. Life is too short. And so I think those are the types of things that are really going to affect the misogy goal that I have for this year and whether I share it or not.
Mark Williams [00:14:21]:
I guess we'll see in the coming weeks. I think my plan is to take the break, take a couple of weeks to really write down a lot of my thoughts, which I very rarely do. I tend to think about them out loud. I talk to them with close friends and family to figure out what it is that I want. But I feel like you can have little mini ones too. Right now we're doing this mini 75, day one. And so it's I think practicing small, disciplined goals that you can see a result in. Whether it's like you're practicing discipline, whether you're practicing wellness, whether you're practicing a short term goal.
Mark Williams [00:14:51]:
It'll be interesting to see as you habit stack some of these things. And anyway, I'd love to hear some of the people's, what their goals are for the year, however they want to convey them. If they want to drop us a message on Instagram, we'll post these videos obviously on LinkedIn as well. But I'd love to hear what people's goals are for. For 25 or even reflecting on some of the ones that they didn't even know they had for 24. I think it's just really important to just take a minute over the next week or two and just reflect on the things that you know have really defined you or things that you would like to define yourself. And I was thinking about what does the future hold? I think a lot of it maybe just as an age thing or you hit a timeout. I think this birthday really me hard, not my personal one, but my friends and just I feel like my mind keeps drifting back towards being thankful for the 44 things that have happened to me, if you will, if I'm going to pick one a year, which is hard to do up into this year.
Mark Williams [00:15:45]:
And then what would be the. The next 44? If you're lucky enough to live to be 88, it's on who knows how long you'll live, but basically just being very mindful of that. And I think time is short and things like weddings and, and births and funerals and all these things can really shape us on the goals that we want. And I think being mindful and intentional and I think even by me talking about it in this way, it's going to help me to be more mindful of what I want. Because so often I. You start Monday, I write down the list of all the things I want to do that week and before you know it, it's Friday afternoon. And you've done, if you're like me, you've probably done 50 things that were not on your list and there's still a lot of things on your list. And it's just there just never seems to be enough time.
Mark Williams [00:16:26]:
But I think if you stop and reflect that I think we accomplish more than we think we do. And so I think it's okay to give yourself some credit. And I think that's one of the key Things about setting boundaries. I think setting boundaries with yourself and realizing that you are good enough. You, you have done a good job, you've tried hard. And doesn't mean that we can't try harder tomorrow or that we can't be better tomorrow, I should say, because I think effort is effort. You can try really hard in a bad way and not make any progress. And you could have mediocre effort in a really great direction and make a lot of progress.
Mark Williams [00:17:00]:
And how great would it be if you had a lot of effort and really great direction? Clear messaging, clear focus, clear goals. You can accomplish a lot. And I think that's a point of this whole Misogy Colorado challenge. Call it whatever you want, but really more of a principle that it could bring peace and order to your year and that you could organize a lot of things around it. And I think this kind of shows up in a lot of other principles. You'll hear a lot of people what they'll say, New Year's resolution. And they'll, they'll list five, six, seven, eight things. And I know I'm super guilty of this where I want to fix five things, I want to start five companies, I want to do 20 goals.
Mark Williams [00:17:38]:
And you always think you're the exception to the rule. I'm sure we'd be. I know I would be far better off picking one thing and letting that be my one focus. And I think the hard part, of course, is there's a lot of other calls on our time in our life. It's not like last year for me. It's not like I couldn't be a dad or couldn't be a parent or couldn't run a business because my, my, one of my main goals last year was running this ultramarathon. That would be pretty silly life for me personally to just have that be the only thing I focused on. Like, that's not sustainable.
Mark Williams [00:18:05]:
So I think there's other things in your life that obviously still have to happen besides this one goal, but I think they do show up in other ways. And so anyway, I would just encourage everyone to spend some time thinking about this over the holidays. And I know I'm looking forward to it. And have a great Thursday. 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 Co 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.
Mark Williams [00:18:49]:
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 a collective, as well as obviously me in Minnesota as well for our second annual collective.
Mark Williams [00:19:18]:
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 curious builder podcast.com thanks for tuning in to the 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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