Q & A Episode 49 - “Happy Trails and Dr. Death” What Happens If Your Builder Dies?

Jul 9

Episode #49 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | “Happy Trails and Dr. Death” What Happens If Your Builder Dies?

What happens to your business if you die tomorrow? In true Curious Builder fashion, Mark D. Williams turns a grim question into an insightful, funny, and oddly empowering Q&A episode. From picking a successor to gifting handyman budgets to clients, Mark outlines his personal 10-step plan to protect his team, his clients—and yes, even posthumously prank his followers. It’s morbid. It’s useful. It’s very on-brand.

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 D. Williams 00:04
You now have a very clear action plan where you can tell the client, hey, here's my 10 steps. This is what's going to happen. This is how it's going to happen. We've actually thought about it, and you're in safe hands. You we're going to take care of your home, or whatever it is that you however you want to handle this, because if you don't do anything and something goodness forbids happens, it's going to be a colossal mess. Welcome

Mark D. Williams 00:32
to the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today is Thursday. It's our Q A Day, and this was something that was kind of grim, but I'll probably laugh quite a bit because I just, I think it's there's also some, a lot of humor in it is, what happens if you die today? What does that look like? So this weekend, I had a family friend who's been in very poor health for a long, long time, and it's really going to be a blessing here over the next week or so. And so as a family, we're planning on how to say goodbye to this person. And so I just been thinking a little bit about death. And so anyway, I walked in on Monday when I was recording this, just kind of in a funny mood, and I was basically talking to my office manager, my controller, Joel. I was like, hey, if I die, what do you what would you do? And he's like, why we'd finish the jobs that we have under construction? And I'm like, great. That's a great answer. That's what I would hope but we should probably put some thought into this. And I don't think most people don't plan on dying. And anyway, it triggered basically two or three hours of me sort of thinking about this. And I thought I would do a quick 20 minute Q A on this and and I'll talk about that in the podcast. We're gonna bring on my longtime lawyer, Steve yok. He's been on twice before, the dirt lawyer. He's hilarious. His episodes are amazing. If you haven't checked him out, he's quite funny, but we were having a good laugh about it, about he's gonna have to, we're gonna have to develop, basically what we're gonna come up with, what I do, kind of the death story of Mark, like, what'll happen? How would you execute it? How does it handle with your family? And we'll walk the whole audience an hour episode of what business owners should do. And this came up because I've had several clients over the years say, hey, if something happens to you, what happens to our build? I was just kind of said, well, my team will have a great team, and they'll finish the projects that we're on, and kind of go from there. And recently, while we're doing the spec home, the same conversation came up again. And so I just thought, you know what, today is the day that I'm just going to sit down with a pen and paper, without a lawyer or anybody else telling me what to do, and I'm just going to write down, like, what are the six things that I think should happen? Like, I could create, like, a little manifesto of what should happen. Should something bad happen to me? It could be an accident. Could be, uh, oh, yeah. Hopefully it's an accident. Hopefully it's not a sniper bullet, but whatever it might be, and what does that look like? I'm sure I need to give it a lot more thought, but I just thought, well, it's fresh in my mind, I would talk about it. So number one, and this is only from the company that I'm speaking, I'm not going to talk about my personal life or family or those types of things. There is some tie in here, but this is strictly as a business owner, what happens to your business if you die. So for me, it was, I want to be very clear that the clients that have entrusted us to build their home that we would finish the home that we've started. I'm thinking, as we know, in construction, things are very cyclical. You've got ups, you've got downs. A lot of our projects take 12 months to 16 months to build. So they're long build cycles. And I'm just thinking like, no one knows these homes better than my team. We're at rough in phase. We've already been designing it for six months to a year. We've been building it for four or five months. No one is better situated than our team to finish it, and so really, they should finish it, in my opinion. So I have a small team. Let's call it three, four people, and so I better pick a leader. So I guess this morning I say, Joel, you're my controller. If you're in charge of all the money anyway, might as well make you an executor. You can sign the checks and distribute the money, pay everyone's salary and do the draws, keep the money flowing, handle on the insurance. And he kind of knows it all anyway. He does it all the time, all the way. So it's like, that's not he's like, yeah, no problem. I'll do it. And he actually had this idea. He called it a six month severance bonus to incentivize your team to stay on, because the last thing you want to do, if both from your standpoint and also the client standpoint, is obviously you have instability, or you have a lack of a figurehead, like that's a problem. So in my case, I'm gonna make Joel the president. He'll be the executor of making sure everything gets finished. And kind of, you need one person sort of in charge, even though, as a community, our team would obviously talk to each other, but then you have this bonus structure. How do you keep them around? So if all three or four people stay on through the duration, and that would be something, I would make keys that they have to stay for the duration to all the homes. So let's just say, in this fictitious example, you've got four homes under construction in varying states, they all the whole team would have to stay till all the projects are 100% completed in, the clients are moved in. Then at that point, they would all get a six month severance of their salary. So for an example, if they made $100,000 they would get a $50,000 bonus, which is a lot of money. And so that would be their incentive to stay on. It also then allows them quote six more months to kind of wrap. Things up, take some time off, find another job, something like that. I thought it'd be too complicated, like if I died suddenly in an accident, to do an ESOP company where your employees own. It is a lot more thoughtful process. And so we're not really set up that way. I think down the road, potentially, if you had like cancer, or you had a long term illness where that was something you really wanted to do. I think you have a little bit longer runway. You could design something like that, but I'm talking about just they got hit by a bus crossing the street, or a sniper bullet took you out. So anyway, it was nice that my office manager and controller is the one that sort of suggested it. So it really came from them. Like, what would it take for them to stay on? Like, I don't think it matters what I think, because I'm dead in this example, like I've got to ask them. And so I think once I write this up, I'm going to ask each one of them what would they want. And then I think after you finish all the homes, then you would liquidate your assets. In my case, I rent, so there's nothing, no building to buy. So we're on a month to month. So I guess that's that we're not going to keep renting it. You sell all your assets, the cameras, the trucks, the video equipment, the computers. We don't hold a lot of land, so there's really nothing to sell there. So from my standpoint, there's not a lot to liquidate. But some companies have big developments. It gets a lot messier. The bigger your company is, and the more that you have, obviously to get rid of. I was also thinking of buying a like a 210 warranty. Obviously, in the state of Minnesota, we have a one to 10. And so for me, I was like, Well, you might as well the company's not gonna be here to service our clients anymore, so the active ones, so we might as well buy, you can buy, obviously, a backup warranty, 210 warranties. And we would have, we'd give that to all our clients, obviously, so that they had someone to take care of them and service them during that window, because the company's not there anymore. I think it's the right thing to do. I was also thinking about if the house was new. Usually at one year, we come back and do craftsmanship. Well again, at that point we have no employees. There's no one to service the home. And so I was floating around this idea that we would gift each client that we're actively working with, not ones that we built with previously that are still within that 10 year window, but wherever the number ends up being, and you're like, we're going to give this back to you from the company, so that you could hire handyman service, that you could fix the little odds and ends. It's more than enough to take care of whatever those things might be, but it also is just kind of a gesture of goodwill. Seems like that would be a nice thing to do. And then it's then my last one is actually my favorite one that on April 1 of the following year after I passed, because this is very on brand for me, is that there would be a video that would be posted on our social media channels, as well as, like a Christmas card at some foreign undisclosed location, like in Europe, or on an island in Tahiti or something like that, and it would just be just kidding, just to mess with them. I thought that would be sort of

Mark D. Williams 07:54
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So anyway, those were kind of my six things that I want to do. And so since then, I actually took a video, and I videoed it to like five or six builder friends across the country, and asked them, Do they have anything in place? All of them, except for one, said no. So I think this is going to actually probably be a pretty common story that most people do not have a plan in place for. In the only person that did, had a death scare a couple years ago with a health ailment, and really caused them to reflect and change some business operational things. So it was really caused because of that. So I would imagine that prior to that, they also didn't have anything. So I would imagine, if you're listening to this, and you are like the seven people I have already polled, I'm guessing you don't have anything in place either. So anyway, I thought it'd be really interesting. So like I said, I'm gonna have Steve yacht, come on, and we're gonna do a whole one hour episode, probably in about a month or 45 days from now, I'll have designed something legally for my own company that's much more official than these six points. I'll go through the process. Some people know what key man insurance is like. I have on my personal side, life insurance that would help my family if I'm gone. But for the company, they call key man insurance. So you're the key man in this example, it's me. So like, there, I don't know what the policy is, it'll look into it, but basically, that money would then go to the company to help. Maybe you have to hire a consultant to step in. Maybe you're a sole proprietor, and you do a lot of the work. Maybe don't have a team who's going to step in to handle it then, and so will that key man insurance then hire someone to take care of your clients. I think it's also, honestly, this developing, this is probably one of the reasons why I want to talk about on the podcast, is, I think it's important for us to talk about, I think it's important for us to think about, I've been very comfortable talking about death my whole life, probably because my dad and I talk about it all the time. About it all the time. And oddly enough, last night, I was tucking my daughter into bed, reading a book, and we were talking about our friend Gwen, who's passing here shortly, and my nine year old was just like, Dad, I don't want to spend the whole time talking about this, and so we walk through that. And so it's probably just been on my mind in the background. That's is why I'm talking about it. And I just think it's important for us to at least discuss I think not discussing it leaves the people that are behind us in a very difficult scenario. The con is, let's say you don't do this on this case, your spouse, if you're married, has to pick up all the pieces. And so my wife is a lovely person, but she doesn't know anything about running a business like it would be in a monumentous task for her to try to step in. Well, she has a job and raising kids like she couldn't do it. So what happens? I mean, the bad scenario. And I was just talking to Steve a little bit about this. We'll talk about this more when we have our full episode on it is at least in the state of Minnesota. I don't know what that's called, not disaster relief run. But basically, there's a fund that if your builder dies or goes out of business or whatever, that you can go to the state and say, hey, my my builder died. And I think it's $75,000 so it's not a lot of money. What is that going to look like if you're building a $5 million house? 75 grand doesn't get you a lot now I do what I don't know, is all the intricate mechanics of it in terms of overbuild, under build, all those types of things. But the reason, I think, why this is important for us as entrepreneurs and business owners to talk about, I think this would be a huge selling tool. Forget doing the right thing and forget on top of it, making sure everyone has a good playbook for this is a worst case scenario. But the selling point is now with confidence, because I have had this question a number of times in my career, is if something happens to you, what will happen? And you now have a very clear action plan where you can tell the client, hey, here's my 10 steps. This is what's going to happen. This is how it's going to happen. We've actually thought about it, and you're in safe hands. You we're going to take care of your home, or whatever it is that you however you want to handle this, because if you don't do anything and something goodness for bids happens, it's going to be a colossal mess. And so anyway, I just thought it was important to talk about it. Maybe this resonates with you. Maybe it doesn't, maybe it's causing some concern. Maybe that's probably good, frankly, maybe it causes you to call your lawyer and say, Hey, we need to talk. We need to create a action plan for my company. So anyway, I think, regardless, there'll be some benefits out of this podcast, in how having us think about, like, what are we going to do when things when we're gone? You know, some people are very into their legacy, and that's just not something that motivates me, or I'm interested in if someone knows you for something, because you just did a good job. Like, I'm obviously happy with that, but like the idea that I would personally want to build a business so that I could have a legacy for me, it's not something I'm interested in for me and me only. It just feels vain. It feels like I'm creating something just for me, like a temple to myself, like I'm just zero interest in that. Now that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to build something that would be for my kids or my family, because it would help their lifestyle like that. I'm very interested in but for the sake of just having it, just so that my name is remembered, it's kind of like a tombstone. I'm not doesn't really matter to me. If someone knows where I'm buried, it's just a personal thing. I don't know why it was because that's how my dad thinks he used to always say that he didn't want to didn't want to he didn't want a tombstone that was vertical. He wanted one that was horizontal so the mower could just mow over it. He didn't want to inconvenience anybody after he was dead, which I think was ironic, because he actually inconveniences people a lot while he's alive. So that was a very gracious move on his part. But anyway, I think having a sense of humor about it. Is also kind of important, because there's not a lot of things that are certain. But one thing is certain is we're all going to die at some point, and so I think we can acknowledge that, and that's okay. So back to the regular business planning. I think one of the things that that I have been considering, even over the last call it couple years, in terms of scaling my business, is what does this business look like if I'm gone, so that I could sell it. Because it turns out, whether you're dead or whether you want to sell it, a lot of the thought process is the same. If you want to sell your company to somebody, it needs to operate like you're not there. Well, that's the same as death. And so I think if you are, if you're going to create an asset where your company is valuable. Can somebody step in and do your job? And maybe it's not exactly what you do. No one person is 100% replaceable for all the skill sets they have, but maybe it's a couple people could do your job for sure. They could. And so I think when you think about the end of yourself in your company, whether it's death, retirement, sale, transfer of power, Aesop, whatever it is, all of this is going to make your business stronger. It's going to make it more valuable, not only to somebody else. It's going to make it more valuable to you, because now you're taking ownership in that transition phase. And I'm not seeing any epiphanies here. I mean, most of us know that we're gonna die at some point, and if you're not, I can't believe you're hearing it for the first time on a curious, bitter podcast. And I anyway, I just find that this is really helpful to think about scaling. One of the things that's been on my mind a lot, and I want to bring on as a guest, is, what is the point of scaling? As I've mentioned a long time before, is that in the past, I've been hesitant to hire a bunch of the people. Because in some ways I thought more people, more problems, but that's really not accurate. The more people you have, the more freedom you create for yourself, because people can do your job. And if you look back, depending on the size of your company, with every hire that you had, yes, you had to take on some management, yes, you had to work on people skills. Yes, you had to do other things, but you also got rid of a lot of things that you don't have to do. And every time that I've hired someone, my stress level has gone down because I'm no longer doing the things the all the things I used to have. You're sort of empowering yourself to have more freedom to do the things that you want to do. And so I I think the positive view of planning for the end, it's kind of like that old quote of a begin with the end in mind. If you are planning for the end of your company, you're going to make some really good steps along the way. So anyway, that's enough of death and mayhem. We can call this episode Dr death, and everyone can have a great day, and we'll catch you next week.

Mark D. Williams 17:37
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