Q & A Episode 33 - Maximize Your Brand Opportunities at IBS with Mark Williams' Expert Advice
Episode #33 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Maximize Your Brand Opportunities at IBS with Mark Williams' Expert Advice
In this episode of The Curious Builder podcast, host Mark Williams shares his game plan for attending the upcoming International Builder Show (IBS). With a focus on brand partnerships for his upcoming spec home project, Mysa Hus, Mark offers insights on product exploration, wellness in building, and the importance of planning and networking at such a massive event. He also teases a follow-up episode to discuss what happened at the show and invites listeners to check out the Curious Builder Boot Camp, emphasizing wellness and networking without the distraction of phones.
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About The Curious Builder
The host of the Curious Builder Podcast 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 D. Williams 00:03
If you haven't been there before, the education pass is really interesting. Obviously, the products are phenomenal. It's worth going and looking at it, but sometimes you just get burned out of I call it shopping, essentially product shopping, and sometimes sitting down for an hour or two and listening more about the business education side. I think what IBS does really good job of is catering to all kinds of different interests. Welcome
Mark D. Williams 00:29
to peers, builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today is our Thursday Q and A, and people have been asking me, I'm heading out to the international builder show next week. I guess the day that this airs will be the last day of the builder show. So I'm going to do what basically, what is my plan? How do you gear up for the International builder show? And then I will do a follow up, Q, a of what actually happened. So here's the plan of what I'm going to do, and then we'll find out next week what actually happened. This will be my third time going to the builder show, and it's a monstrous event. It might be, I think, the biggest trade show in the world. It's massive. It is so big, and Vegas has got the wherewithal to do it. You're talking five, six different buildings, hundreds of 1000s of people, the amount of exhibitors. It's overwhelming. The first year I went, I had no plan. Everyone said, Don't do that. Of course, you do the thing you're told not to do. But actually, I just wandered. I think the first year was just wander, seek and destroy. You wander around. You wear comfortable shoes because you are walking a lot on concrete, and you meet a lot of people, you see a lot of interesting things, but you get burned out. There's just a lot going on. I think it's actually a little bit more refreshing to have a plan, because it brings order to the chaos. The second year, I went, last year, had a much clearer idea of what I wanted to do. I kept finding myself going back to K biz, which is the kitchen and bath side of it just little more showy, more fun stuff, a lot of cool products, things that we see, touch and feel that we're often seems like our homeowners are very interested in the builder show side of it seems to be more the products that we as builders need to know and the performance and obviously have to build a really highly functioning home, as well as making sure that it looks really great. And then the Kba side is more the sizzle, if you will. Working out with the podcast side of things. I'm going there really as two endeavors or two businesses. I should say one is the curious builder. So I'm working with my brand partners. I have certain responsibilities for filming content. I also want to meet a lot of the content everyone in the building industry is really at this event. And so if you're going to meet a new company, it's a great place to meet them, all their content creators, if you're in the social media game, or if you're trying to do content creation, they're going to be there. So you can at least introduce yourself to them and then follow up with them after that meeting, after IBS. And this year, I really had a much more dedicated plan. We're doing my first spec home in 16 years. It's called Misa whose which is Swedish for cozy here in Minnesota. And so the plans are done. We just applied for conditional use permit and Melissa Holland, the my interior designer partner on this, we are going there with a very specific plan of engaging brands that want to be a part of our project together, and we're obviously leveraging a lot of our existing partners and doing some creative marketing around it. We actually created a separate web page just for our brand partners. So this took a lot more thought and creativity and time that we had to have this implemented weeks, if not months, in advance. So it's not something you can just do off the whim. You just certainly don't have to go to this level, but I'm actually really excited to have this be a difference maker. So we've got specialized cards with a QR code that takes our brand partners specifically to a hidden page only for them. And so as I go around the floor, my plan is Monday. I'm going to fly out Monday morning from Minneapolis. I'll get in probably around 11 o'clock. There's a couple other builders that I network from around the country. We're going to have lunch. Gonna have lunch, spend a couple hours together, catching up my friend Nathan Marsala, who's in my builder 20 group. We have this tradition. He and I are both watch fanatics, and so there's this watch boutique we like to go to, and basically, we'll catch up about life as well as look at all these cool watches. It's just a fun place to go. We'll have dinner together, and then the contractor coalition alumni get together is that night, a lot of the people that I interact with across the country, the reason I have the podcast all really started three years ago. Now, hard to believe it was only that long ago. Morgan Moller, Brad Levitt, Nick Schiffer and Tyler Grace now are having basically a meet up for contractor, coalition alumni. And so there'll be a couple 100 people there, I would imagine, and it's gonna be great to just see people that I connect with on social media all the time, people that I've had on the podcast. And so I'm really, really looking forward to that, even if nothing else, if that was the only thing just seeing for a couple hours all those people is worth it in itself. Then really, Tuesday morning hit the ground running. I think my plan for Tuesday is that will be my day just to work on brand deals for Misa whose one of the ways I've tried to make it more successful than I haven't have had in the past, is have a really clear idea of some of the brands I want to work with. And so I've been emailing them over the last month or two, saying, Hey, I'm coming. Here's our Misa who's brand page. I'm coming by. Here's our media kit. Is there a time? So if I can, I'd like to set up a time ahead of time so I know that I'm going to meet the head honchos, if you will, or if I know one of their sales reps or one of their people, can they make sure that their boss is there so I could meet them in person, having that face to face interaction? I don't know how many deals are made at IBS. I imagine quite a few, actually, in the dinners after but for me, I want to meet them 1020, minutes of their time really get a sense. Is this a brand I want to partner with? Are they interested in partnering with us? And then really it's, it's the weeks after that, I plan to follow up and really make sure that this is talking about orders, talking about finances, and really saying, hey, is this a partner that we're going to work together for the next year and a half, excuse me, for the next year and a half on this house. So Tuesday is going to be all builder. So some of the companies that I'm going to be looking at, some of them already partnered with, like rock wall, gonna be visiting with them. I'm really impressed with their product. I'm excited to have them be a part of our Misa, who's Huber. We're going to do 12 inch, or we're gonna do the R 12 zip system on the whole exterior of the house, as well as their extreme Advantech on the floor and the roof deck as well. So I'm really excited to go talk to their head people there, meet some of their people in production and design as well. We've already spec that out with the architect on the project as well, and then just meet some other people. So I'll be looking specifically for I really like thermally modified wood. So I'm gonna stop by Luna Woods project, been in touch with them. Arbor wood is out there, I believe as well. They're from Minnesota. And then just see what else is out there, see if there's some other brands that might align with kind of the Scandinavian approach that I'm trying to do with this home. This particular home is all based on wellness. And so I'll be looking a lot about the product information. Is it off gas? Is it healthy for people? And there's a look and vibe to it, which is important, but I think right now, I'm more focused on the wellness side of it. Tuesday afternoon, I'm going to be sitting on a panel at builder trends booth with Mike Weaver, just talking about the power of relationships and how you can level up your building company by really establishing deep relationships. So I'm really excited for that. And I get to see Mike a lot for our curious builder collectives as well around the country, but specifically in Minnesota. So it's always good to see people on a regular basis, but then seeing them at IBS is always a special treat. And then get to talk a little bit see who shows up to listen. So if you're on the floor, hope to meet you there. And then Tuesday night, Pella has a happy hour from Pella Northland, and here in Minnesota, they've got something going on, so all the builders that are out there will be there. They've got an open invitation. And then Pella corporate has something that night as well. And then also that night ends up being a lot of evening events. There's a restaurant called best friends. We actually stumbled upon it completely by accident last year. It's this cool Korean fusion restaurant. We just order family style and catch up. And I think there's gonna be 20 of us this year. We've got two tables of 10, and so that'll be great. Usually try to get get to bed pretty early, if I can, eight o'clock. Dinner is pretty late for me, especially with the time change, so that's gonna be a later than normal evening. Then Wednesday, more be up early, working out, and then back to the IBS floor. I've got a couple meetings. You can get an early pass if you set up ahead of time. So I'm going to be stopping by a couple companies before I think the floor opens at nine, but if you get an expo pass, you can get in there at 815, meet with some brands ahead of time, really maximize your time, and then basically all day, Tuesday, I'm going to be Miss, as I mentioned. Melissa, hold on from Oh interiors, we are going to be at K biz for basically six hours straight. So we'll be looking at appliances. I think we're looking at Fisher Paykel, out of New Zealand. We've been talking with them a little bit through our local partners all Inc, and we're going to be looking at plumbing and lighting and just all the things at K biz. I know we have a meeting set up with Toto and with briso and so really looking to see which one of these brands want to be a part of misus and which ones really align with the style that Melissa is picking, as well as something that we believe in philosophically. So that's going to be pretty exciting. And then Wednesday afternoon, I will leave it open. I'll probably attend a seminar or two. I've got some friends that are speaking. I know Nick Schiffer speaking on Rockwell's panel, so I'll probably stop by meet with them in the afternoon as well. And then I left the Wednesday night open. So we'll see what happens. There's so many people there. Either head to bed early because I'll be bushed, or sometimes sponsors or trade partners want to take you out. Get early dinner, get a good night's sleep. I'll be dog tired, I'm sure, after that much talking and walking. And then Thursday morning, I lead pretty open. So I think I fly out. I think one o'clock, so Thursday morning. I've got essentially three four hours that if I want to round on any few more sponsors, or if I want to take another look at a product, I've got some free time there as well. So that's how I'm planning on tackling IBS. It's a big endeavor, and we'll see how many of these things work and how many of they don't. But if you've never been before, I get a lot of people that ask, What's your plan? And so that's why I decided to do an episode like this. Is just walk through nothing fancy about it, just basically sharing how I do it. Some people I know in the past, if I didn't have Misa, who's a big part of this is really trying to find specific products for the spec home. If I did not have a spec home, I would probably change what I. Do a little bit. I would probably leave a half day, maybe even a full day. There's an education pass. You can get to people like Brad Levitt on all the people from contractor coalition. They're gonna have different speaking panels. Modern craftsman has got a panel, Tyler and Nick and so it's really they have set topics. And so if you haven't been there before, the education pass is really interesting. Obviously, the products are phenomenal. It's worth going and looking at it. But sometimes you just get burned out of I call it shopping, essentially product shopping, and sometimes sitting down for an hour or two and listening more about the business education side. And I think what IBS does really good job of is catering to all kinds of different interests. Obviously, you've got the products, you've got K biz with all the kitchen and bath. And then, of course, these educations. You can talk about finances, you can talk about networking, you can talk about solar, you can talk about energy. And so they do an amazing job of getting the top minds from around the country to talk on these topics. So I know the first year, I went to a lot of education ones, and it was very much well worth the time in some ways. It's like a podcast, live panel interview,
Mark D. Williams 10:59
and they're anywhere from 330 minutes to 45 minutes. And so they're really effective, and some of them get so popular that you can't get in. Since we've got a big speaker like a brad Levitt, his will tend to fill up or sell out. You're going to want to get there a little bit early if that's the one that you want to attend. But sometimes it's just wandering and see and you'll be surprised at how often you meet people that you either follow on social media platforms, it's hard sometimes to meet up with people there, because it is so big, you'd be surprised at just randomly bumping into people. It's pretty amazing how often that actually happens. So anyway, I'm really excited to keep an open mind and excited to see a bunch of friends and people from across the country, and so I'll report back the following week and see how much of this plan actually happened. Have a great week. If you've been following our social media feeds or even some of our ad reads on our podcast, you're probably aware of just our love for the wellness space and how we're trying to really promote that within the building community. We have our next event, which is called the cures builder boot camp, which is happening in the middle of May. You can go to cures, builder, podcast.com, and under retreats, you can click boot camp, and you can see about all the dates what we're doing. But we are closing the registration on March 10. Right now. We have nine, maybe 10 people signed up. We're trying to keep it smaller. We'll max capacity at 20 people, and it's going to be three days, completely off the grid. There's no phones, and you will be working out twice a day, maybe rocking with a backpack. We can do some caneering. We're gonna be in Zion National Park, and really a way to connect with other builders in just a different way. After obviously you're working out breaking a sweat, there's gonna be actually an hour of quiet where you basically have to just journal about conversations or things about your business or whatever you want to journal about, frankly, but then a lot of those times, when you're I always find that when I'm walking or hiking for hours at a time, or running a lot of those great business ideas come up, and now we've got a collection of entrepreneurs that are doing it with you. And so there's a lot of value to, let's say, a four or five hour hike in Zion National Park with another business owner that you haven't connected with before. Sometimes you can be really vulnerable with people you don't even know, and you're basically just talking about life, business, whatever you want to talk about. And so I just wanted to do it around wellness in a kind of a different way. And I think the big thing was no phones. So you actually have to check your phone in so that there's no phones, which I'm pretty excited about. In fact, a few people said they couldn't come because they couldn't give away their phone. And I said this literally, event is based for you specifically, I think it's really important that we give ourself kind of this mental clarity and this time away so we can think about our business and we can come back refresh. So if you're interested in that sort of thing, please head to the curious builder podcast.com under retreats, and you can find out more about the boot camp. There's also a roster of who is signed up so far, so you can get a sense of who's coming. We've got a little brief bio on them, and you can get a day of itinerary. So hope to see you in May, and we'll see you at the International builder show. Thanks for tuning in. 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. You.
