Q & A Episode 44 - Crafting Homes with Intention, Not Just Tools

Episode #44 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Crafting Homes with Intention, Not Just Tools

This week, Mark gets reflective—sharing the quotes that have stuck with him through 21 years in construction. He talks client psychology, setting realistic expectations, working as a team, and why square footage isn’t nearly as important as how a home feels. A great listen for builders, designers, and anyone who’s ever tried to get a vision off the ground.

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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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• Transcript

  Mark D. Williams  00:00

  If you haven't registered for the contractor coalition summit yet, please head to the curious builder podcast.com, under events or directly to the contractor coalition summit.com for event details. It's June 19 through the 23rd if you're looking to level up your business and take that next step, trust me. As someone who's gone four times, I can't tell you how valuable the information is that is shared, as well as the connections that you make with builders across the country, head to contractor, coalition summit.com, to learn more and sign up today. Setting the expectations is not really a Get Out of Jail Free card. It's not meant to say, like, we aren't going to try. It's not meant to be like, hey, bad things are going to happen. You're just educating them that this is not, you know, just the smoothest ride on the planet. And I don't think that's I think that's okay. I think you're being honest, you're being genuine, and I think you're really inviting them into the craft, and I think they appreciate that. Welcome to curious player Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today is Thursday, which is Q and A, and today's gonna be a little different. Someone recently, people that know me know that I love quotes, and I'm constantly writing quotes down. I say them all the time. I love analogies, and I thought this would be kind of fun just to go through a few just recent ones that I've heard and just talk about how they've applied to business. Maybe this is your jam. Maybe it's not the one I just heard yesterday when I was talking to a designer, and it's more than just a quote. It's really kind of a mantra, an understanding of why we build and what we're trying to do to help clients. And it was they basically said, our job is to help people make better decisions than they would have made on their own. And it seems like an obvious statement, but I think that's what professional services are. And so I think, like as a builder, you know, my job is a guide. I'm there to guide them. And as we interact with the client, they're giving us clues on how much of our input do they want to hear about and how much do they want us just to do. And there's a pretty big spectrum there, I think, as you have your career, and as you build or design, or as an architect, or whatever your profession is within the building industry, you sort of understand like what is expected of you. And sometimes people like to hear more. I probably share, sometimes more than a client wants, because I'm gaging. I like storytelling, so sometimes I'm doing it as part of the art of the sale. Sometimes I'll try to explain, and sometimes you can read their body language like they don't care, they don't want to hear about it, and that's fine. You've got to obviously learn you're trying. And so I think that's really interesting. I think, like a designer in particular, I think designers do such a good job of curating the things that clients need to know and sort of guide them down the process. Years ago, I had a client. I've only had two of these clients, and actually, there's actually a psychology behind them. They're called maximizers, and it's we've all had clients like this, where they see one thing, and it's probably the thing that they like, they resonate with, but they want to see 99 other things, but for the comeback, and choose the first thing that they saw, and honestly, that's really exhausting. Now, I believe it's a personality trait. I don't know if they can really change that, and I guess now, being in my career, I probably have more compassion on that person and that client than I would have earlier on my career, because I realized that that's not before I thought they were just a pain in the butt. I thought they were just being irritating or contrary, but I really think, like, they need to exhaust all the decisions, and I think that's we need to figure out that early on in the pre con, because that affects your price. Like, obviously, if you are cost plus or hourly, if you're hourly, you're going to be fine, because you're charging hourly for your time. And they're good every time when you build them, if you're a designer, they're going to see pretty quickly that they're using up a lot of hours. And as long as they're aware of it, and you can explain what you're doing, they're going to be fine with it. I think what happens is, if you are a fixed bid, they expect that service. You've way under bid the project, and now no one's really happy you're you're sort of shorting the client because you don't have enough hours, enough meat on the bone to really give them what they're looking for, but you also have no mechanism they expect that that should have been included. So a lot of that needs to be teased out early. But I really appreciate the design firms and the teams that I've worked with and I'm currently working with that are really deliberate on helping the client find, you know the best thing. And I think the clients that are the best are ones that clearly articulate that we are hiring you to help us as a service, and we don't want to pick everything. It sounds exhausting and overwhelming. You were we picked you because you're really good at your profession. Please help us get the best. And I think that's a client who knows themselves and knows enough about the build process to be very intelligent in that question. I think those are the best clients and the best builds when you empower your team that way. I think that's true also of architects. Architects are sometimes specking certain things, but they're really trying to solve a problem. And I think one of my next favorite quotes here is. Present solutions, not problems. And I feel like there's an architect that I've worked with recently that was just talking about how he goes about presenting solutions to his clients through architecture that we are trying to design a home to fit to their lifestyle. I try, personally not to make it about a budget. We know that there is a budget, so I'm not saying ignore the budget, but you know, no one wants to just only be focused on the budget like we're we want to be excited. We want this to be fun. We want it to be enjoyable, creative, interactive. And so for me, that's really understanding, like their why. I'm actually reading Simon Sinek book right now. Start with your why. And he talks about different companies like Apple, for instance, that yes, they produce the mp three player or computers, but they're so dialed into their why that they have a fan base and a loyalty that really can't be replicated unless you really know your why. As a home builder, if we're just building a home, I'm not devaluing the benefit of building a home. But like, What's your why? Like, why are you doing it? And we will go into that because I need to spend some time thinking about it. But I think the more clearly we can explain our why, I think the more people will gravitate towards towards our business or our brand, or whatever our profession is. And I think this goes back to again, to this architect in this quote of present solutions, not problems. I think if a client is clearly articulate that their why of building a home is XYZ, then the client, then the architect, as they're designing the home, clearly needs to say, Hey, I'm solving these lifestyle goals that you have. Maybe you're a young family, and you want your family to enjoy a lot of things in the home, so they're what they're touching and feeling and interacting with. How are you through design, figuring that out? And then as you get older, obviously, this is really important as we age, just not having tripping hazards. Was it a curbless shower? And so those details are dropping the trusses a couple inches so you can make sure that your tile bed times out with the tile floor, the wood floor in the adjacent room, and so there's a lot of details that need to be figured out through the team. But again, I think that the more that we can understand the why of the client, the more all of us can sort of be empowered. So it's going to start being one of my more of my focal point when I'm in taking with a client, like I want to be careful. Like, I'm not scaring them out of building. I just met a client the other day that bought a lot in a development working in and I don't want to, like, I want it to be engaging. Like, you know, tell me more. Like, why are you building? I really want to get it versus, like, why are you building? You could say the same thing costily and scare them. I don't know. I don't know why I'm building, but I think tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy, another one of my all time favorite quotes, and I think as a entrepreneur, we need to have a lot of tact, soft people skills. Lately, I've been asking guests on the podcast if you if you were going to be in another professional and you couldn't pick building. What do you think your decades long career in building has taught you? And most people have picked like psychologists or marriage therapist, I think the soft people skills that we learn with interacting with our clients and our subcontractors. I mean, we're dealing with with problems all the time. And recently, a really talented designer that I was talking to had just talked about alignment of the team, and I love what she said. She's like, I want to make sure that the entire team is together like we're talking about sometimes, like you have the architect and the designer and the client and the builder, and they're all kind of looking out for themselves. And her comment was, is this project is going to fight us, and if we're not on one team and the project's all on the other team, then this project is going to be it's going to be fraught with pitfalls and difficult moments. But if we're all the builder, the architect, the designer and the client, all on one team, and the project is on the other team, like good versus evil, like, that's your two teams. You're fighting the project. And for the builders out there that listen to this, you know what I'm talking about. It's weather delays, it's pricing changes, it's it's tariff, it's COVID, it's city permits. It's a crazy neighbor who sends you an email that says, your vines are growing over my fence. Can you please cut them down today? Like it's an emergency. This vine is like Jack and the Beanstalk kind of vine or something, I don't know. We get so many crazy things that happen in building, and because we're the builders and we need to act professionally, we have to put out this fire again, present solutions, not problems. I feel like that's like the building bumper sticker. Because how often are we on a job site? Things happen, and I think it's important for us as builders. Really, from the first time I meet clients, I talk to them all the time about sort of setting the stage and expectations that, like, I really make it a point to just say that there is nothing perfect in building. This is where art and science meet. Oh, and by the way, we're building a prototype. This house has never been built before, outside in the envelope, in that environment, in the elements, hundreds of people, 1000s of decisions are going into this home, and it's as mate. It's amazing we get. Much right as we do, and so really setting the expectations is not really a Get Out of Jail Free card. It's not meant to say we aren't going to try. It's not meant to be like, hey, bad things are going to happen. You're just educating them that this is not just the smoothest ride on the planet. And I don't think that's I think that's okay. I think you're being honest, you're being genuine, and I think you're really inviting them into the craft, and I think they appreciate that. I look at the times where very rarely does a client come into a home when you're trimming or you're putting in cabinetry and say, Why are they moving so slow? Or because they're seeing it happen. They're seeing people miter crown and put in the box beams, put in the coffered ceiling, and yeah, they might not understand all the things that they're witnessing, but they can visibly see the progress from one day to another. Same with framing, unless the framers aren't there, of course, but if the framers are there, like they see activity. They see it's like a bunch of honey bees flying around. They know honey is being made and I but like drywall and painting seemed to take forever to the person that doesn't know what they're looking at, because it is a longer process. Most of our homes take probably three to five weeks to paint, like that's a lot of time. I'm sure most painter or most clients, if they realized that their home took about a month to paint, they would have a totally different view on the amount of time and effort that goes into it. It's really not until you been through the build process, remodel process, you can truly appreciate how much time is spent on painting. This episode is brought to you by Pella windows and doors. I have used Pella for 21 years as the exclusive window company on every one of my builds. When people ask me who I trust for windows and doors, it's Pella every time. Their craftsmanship, their innovation, the top tier service, make them a no brainer for any custom home builder or designer who demand the best, whether you're designing something bold or building something with timeless elegance, Pella has you covered. They're also the only window company that has a lifetime warranty on all of their windows. I've gotten to know all their people at Pella corporate, as well as locally here at Pella Northland, I'm proud to call them our partners and our friends. Visit pella.com to learn more and connect with your local reps. Today for more information, you can also listen to episode one, where I interview the Pella Northland founders, as well as episode 109 where we talk all about their latest innovation with the study set window. This episode is brought to you by adaptive. If you're still chasing checks and juggling spreadsheets, it's time to upgrade. Adaptive is revolutionizing how builders get paid with AI powered bill pay, automated draws, one click payments and built in Lean waivers, Faster Payments, fewer headaches and total visibility. Adaptive takes care of the back end chaos, so you can focus on what you do best, building. We've used adaptive for two and a half years, and trust them to keep our projects moving and payments flowing. Learn more at Adaptive dot build and simplify the Pay Process today. For more information, you can also listen to episode 10 and episode 15, another quote that I like recently was, years ago, square footage mattered today, living matters. And I really like, I like that quote a lot people. And it's not that people don't still ask the question like, how big is your home, or my least? Like, every builder's least favorite question is, what's your cost per square foot? They just don't know what else to ask. So they ask that question, and even if you tell them the answer, they don't even know what it means. So I don't know why they use that. It's a little bit like if you walked into every car rather than a car Gallery, and said, How much does this car weigh? Very few people know what cars weigh. I know. I certainly don't. Miles per gallon is starting to get a little bit closer. But again, how fast are you driving? Are you late for your kids soccer practice, and you're going 70 miles an hour, going 12 miles a gallon, or you try to take up as much time on the road to get ice cream with your five year old because he's crying, and you're driving 50 miles an hour, getting 28 miles a gallon. It's so subjective, and I think, again, we need to lead with education in telling people you know what's important. So that's why, going back to the why, again, I think that's why living is so important. And I often, I've used this for years, well before I knew what I was doing, we did a lot of artisan homes and parade homes, where people will come through our homes, and it's a way that I can engage with them playfully. And you'd have 500 people in your house one day, and someone would walk in, and the first thing you'd see, usually, was the man, for whatever reason, he goes, Hey, are you the builder? And say, Yep. And usually it wasn't like, close, it was like, further across. How much does this house cost? Or how big is this house? And they're trying to do per foot? And I would usually very kindly and with a smile, say, tell you what. That's a great question. You walk around the whole house, and when you come back, if you can guess it within 50,000 or 100,000 I'll give you a pop or a beer or water or something to basically engage them to come back. And they kind of like the challenge. And I interacted with a lot of people that way. Made it a game. I don't know. I had anyone ever actually guess the price, and I know that every single person that guessed the square footage always guessed it to be bigger than it actually was. And I'm convinced that the reason being is the architectural layout and natural light has always been really important to me, even before I even hardly knew what those were back when I was 23 but certainly now we have an app on our phone when we're doing rural settings that's like mapping the sun in real time. So I can show people when we're on a vacant lot and they're gonna buy it for the first time. Hey, I would recommend your sun room or your kitchen be here, or here's the flight path of the sun in the summer, here's the flight path of the sun in winter solstice. Like, where do you want your natural light coming in? And part of it's a sales tool. They're like, Oh, that's cool. And part of it is reality, like, I want to design the house around natural light, because it's really important how we feel in the wellness of the people in the inhabitants of that home. And so I think it's just another way to showcase your knowledge and your intention behind building. But you know, going back to the first part of the question is, most people think the home is bigger than it actually is when it's very well appointed. And so I think that speaks again to how people want to live. And as builders, when we sit down to that first meeting, rather than asking them, sometimes I will ask them, like, how have you thought about how big you want your home to be? But what I'm really saying is, how big is your current home? Are you looking is that? Is it right size? Does it need to be reallocated size? A lot of our clientele, within a few years, their kids are going to be in college or they're already gone, and a lot of our clientele want a nicer home, more well appointed, but a smaller home. And this living matters is so important, and I think that's where it really speaks into wellness. Right now for those have been following our Mark Williams custom homepage. We have something called Misa Hus and that means cozy in Swedish, and we haven't done a spec home in like, 14 years. And my plan with this home is to create a brand around wellness, and I just feel like we could. It's such an important part of my natural of my physical life, and what I do outside of work, I really wanted to marry that into the home, and the client's response to this has been amazing, and brands response to this have been amazing, but it's really all with living well matters, what we touch, how we feel when we're in a room. Lately, it's been coming up quite a bit. In 21 years, I've never done triple pane windows. Now I have three homes where the clients want triple pane windows, just because I've been talking about it, I'm doing it, I'm doing it in the Mesa Hoos home, not only because it's energy efficient, but also because it's a lot quieter. And I think with triple pane windows, especially if you're like, in your airplane flight path, or if you're by a road, we have one home that's by a dog park and by a trap range. And so the client was like, Well, hey, on Saturdays, when they're out shooting trap. Could we reduce some of the noise transference? I'm like, I really think we should look at triple pane windows. That would help a lot. And so I think sound is a big part of wellness. And again, it's up to us to ask all these questions. I know we've been doing radiant in floor heat in basements for probably 15 years. At this point, it's pretty much just a given in every home that we do. And again, people oftentimes, at least in Minnesota, where we do a lot more basements than other part of the country, people would say, Oh, I don't like a basement because it's cold or damp or dark. And I can always solve for heat. I can't always solve for light. Obviously, if you have a full basement and you've got to pull out the backyard, I can't do big walkout windows or lookout windows. I can maybe get some natural light in on the sides, but I can always solve for heat. And having that in floor, heat that comes up through your feet, you just feel more comfortable versus your traditional airflow where it's coming down from above. It does feel different. I live in a 1919 home in Minneapolis, and the whole house has radiators, and I have to say, it's pretty darn cozy in the winter, I mean that those water radiators really radiate the heat out, and that it's not that blowing air. And so I think that's why, when we have how we feel, you know, what we're touching, it does matter. And so I think it's up to us as professionals to continue to engage with our clients and poke and see what's important to them, so that we can really give them the best service in the best home possible. The last quote that I'll maybe go over today is for my good friend Tony kakanda. I spent a lot of time running and biking with Tony. Shout out to him, and he's always talking about, he says, dials, not switches. And I think this is appropriate in home building. It's appropriate in a lot of things, not everything. Is an on off switch. And I guess we're talking about Windows. So it's not like you're ever going to say, like a switch on off. It's not like you're going to build a house and say, I want no windows or all windows. That's too absolute. But now we've got a dial. So we're saying, You know what, I want a lot of windows on the southern exposure, or I want a lot of windows towards the pool or towards the woods or toward this beautiful view, and then other parts of the home, I can dial back some of the windows to save some money or save some of the efficiencies. I think this dial approach works really well for your budget on allowances, whether it's appliances or lighting allowances. It seems like builders and designers are always fighting over what the allowance should be for lighting in particular. And we're doing some initial cost analysis. I don't know that at this point, they haven't gone far enough down the design path for me to have something to react to. So often call the designer, and I'll say, what would be an appropriate number for, let's say a $3 million build, what would be a good number? And I've seen ranges. Usually the designers want more than what I want to put in there. And they'll say, I'd love 3040, 5060, 70,000 for lighting, and I'll have to make a judgment call based on the client, like I'm happy to do that. Have they seen any lighting in that range? And if the designer says, No, they haven't, I said, tell you what? Why don't we? Why don't we get to 35 or 40,000 for an allowance set? But it's a dial. Let's dial it back a little bit, because a lot of times, as we know, I'll usually do two to three price tests per home. Usually I'm the first one. Obviously, I'm interacting with the client from day one before they decide the design retainer. And we're talking high level. What budget did they what is their budget parameters? Hey, I want to be between three and a half and 4 million. Okay, I've got about a $500,000 range there. And I tell them I would like to come in at 375 so I've got 250 for overages and changes during design. I don't want to always design to the highest end. I think sometimes the clients don't always tell us what their true budget is, because they know that. They tell us 3.5 to four. What do we hear? We hear four. And so I want to tell them I heard you. I don't want to spend all your money. Let's dial it back so that you have some room to grow, because we all know it always grows. So let's start with a little bit lower so they have room to grow and they don't feel stressed. Again. That's dialing it back. Then we do our price test, and let's say that home price comes back at four or five or four seven. So we're in this example, we're 500 or $700,000 over budget. It's not like we don't ever want to get to the point where the client throws the switch and says, I'm not building, and I've been there. I mean, I think every builder who's been around long enough for remodeler, sometimes clients get decision fatigue, and we have to be very careful that we don't get them in a situation where the switch is ON OFF. We want to stay in the dial approach, like, let us dial it back. So let's, let's take out. And this is where our work along process works really well, especially for cost. Plus you can sit down in your conference room, you can put the numbers on the board. That's what we do, and it's like a visa bill. Walk through these numbers on how we got to this home that's over budget, and let's work together on bringing this down. Maybe your lighting allowance was 70,000 What if we let's shave off 30,000 and go down to 40,000 is that soon good to you? So you're getting so you're getting buy in. It's a way for you to educate the client. And so anyway, I love this dial and switch and quote, just because I feel like it's so applicable to so many things. So anyway, this was Thursday and quotes. Hope you enjoyed it. Tune in for Mondays, for our episodes, and Thursdays for Q and A and evidently, quotes, have a great day. We've had the podcast now for two and a half years, coming up on three, and I get questions all the time through DMS, on Instagram, emails, as well as to our account. Maybe we've had a guest on where a question has come up that really triggers an idea for you. If you didn't know, we have a one to one consulting session through the curious builder platform on our website, curious builder.com or curiousbuilder podcast.com you can click on the one to one and schedule one hour of my time, and we will simply just sit down, have a virtual call, and we'll talk about any business idea that you want, marketing, branding, operations, really, anything that helps you and helps your business. Maybe it's a guest that you want an introduction to. Maybe it's a guest we've had on and they brought up something about scaling or hiring and firing, or anything that might resonate with you as a business owner, that you want to expand and talk on. We'd be happy to do it. If you're interested in that, please reach out to us at the curious builder podcast.com. Thanks for tuning in 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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