Q & A Episode 50 - Losers Are Winners Part 1: Hiring, Firing & Keeping the Right People with Katie Kath

Jul 16

Episode #50 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Hiring, Firing & Keeping the Right People with Katie Kath

Welcome to Fail Club, where losers really are winners—eventually. Mark kicks off this new multi-part series with designer and builder Katie Kath to swap war stories about team culture fails, the cost of ignoring your gut, and the power of doing the scary stuff anyway. It’s unfiltered, funny, and surprisingly motivating for any builder, remodeler, or business owner who’s learned the hard way that perfection is a myth—and sometimes, a lawsuit is just tuition for the next level.

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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Katie Kath 00:04
It just became really clear that I needed to make a decision, and it was either I needed to get everybody on board with our core values, or I needed to just have a real, honest conversation that I just don't think this is going to work out. We never like to do that, and we want things to be very amicable. But it started, it starts to creep into that toxicity, right? It's just it's a cancer across the team. You can see morale lowering. Welcome
Mark D. Williams 00:30
to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host today, I have a very special guest. I have a repeat guest. I have Katie Cath on from J Cath design and reinvent. Hey, Katie. Hey. How's it going? I'm doing great. So usually for our Thursday episodes, we're doing Q and A, and I appreciate you coming on for our inaugural losers are winners series. And so I was thinking about fail Fridays, which is fine, but really, this idea of being an entrepreneur is littered with failures. And the seeds for this was last year was one of the roughest years of my career, and I had someone come up to me, like, two months ago, and they're like, Mark, you're just killing it. We're following it. You're just doing so great. I was like, actually, last year was really rough. And so the point of it is, is like, Yes, from a marketing standpoint, of course, we're putting our best work out there. We're obviously trying to attract clients. But you know, the podcast is really a different avenue where and you can have successes too. But I kind of feel like in order to really succeed, you have to have failed. Ian, I feel like everyone I've talked to has just a lot of stories. So we're going to be doing a series of you know past guests and other guests just to come on and talk about real talk, things that have not gone well, what they've learned from it. And anyway, I appreciate you as a friend and as a colleague, being the first one through the glass door here with me. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. So you know you've been in business for quite a while. For those that have not listened to you and Jesse, your husband and wife team remodelers and have a cabinet shop that you guys were episode two. So if people want the full story, go back to December 15 of 2022, for Episode Two on the curious builder, if you get the full story, but why don't we talk where you're at now? Katie, tell give us a. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. Give us a. Give us something we can sink our teeth into here. Yeah,
Katie Kath 02:08
you know, this isn't the first time I brought up this topic, be it on Episode Two, who knows, or in a different venue. But I think the biggest challenge, actually, no, my biggest challenge that I face every day, every week, every month or year, is team building and culture, when to hire, when to outsource, navigating the changes that come with having employees, subcontractors, the challenges. I have just been on this mission for the last, oh, I don't know, three years, if not longer. As our team has grown. We're not huge. We have 11 employees, but as we you know, we went from two to four, maybe back down from three to five, five to eight. It's just making sure we have this what feels like a family culture, and that we're all here for the right reason, doing the same passion, the same purpose, not even serving our clients. I hate that phrase, serving but creating. I don't know. I'm also, like, really into the unreasonable hospitality book, which we could probably talk about later. So a lot of these phrases are kind of buzzwords in my mind, but you know, we're just creating this experience right we all want to create this experience for our clients, and finding the right people that feel like they want to be here for that right reason has been really, really, really hard, and we have a great team, but I think it looks like everything is just smooth sailing. And we're doing some team intros again on Instagram. I've joined an HR group. I mean, I'm kind of, I've just been doing a lot behind the scenes to figure out how to do this, do well with intention, and create more than just a job for folks. And so with our team intros, I've had a lot of people recently say, Oh, what a great team you're hiring. Looks so fun to work there. And I think, to your point, they are a great team, but it's super it's been really hard to get here, really, really, really hard to get here. So
Mark D. Williams 03:47
what led to, I mean, are there any examples of hiring somebody where it really didn't work out? And I know I've had examples, for instance, where I hired someone and I'm just so, you know, I guess, oddly optimistic and patient that, you know, where I should have, not have let them go for as long as they did. In some ways it impacted the team, because they saw what my patience and optimism and trying to develop them, what really ended up being was, well, if Mark allows this, it kind of has a team, you know, kind of a team cancer, if you will. And it's easier for me to say that in retrospect, at the time I didn't realize it, because if I realized it, I would have acted differently. I mean, is that, as you it seems like you've had two steps forward, one back. You know, as you've gone up this ladder of employees, any specific stories that kind of come to mind where it sort of dawned on you, like, hey, I need to focus more on culture. Or,
Katie Kath 04:38
yeah, I think it was when I got really clear on what our core values were, and felt really excited to share that with our team. We'd always had them, but we didn't spend a lot of time on them, but I revisit them. I put a lot of words into it. I put a lot of thought and intention into why those core values were in place, and felt really excited about that, because they shifted from over the years. Because we had so much behind us. We had so much history. We worked together, we knew what we were looking for in our team, our client work, and it was very clear at that point in our business that not everybody was aligned with those core values. And I felt sick to my stomach about it. I you know, I had, I'm remaining vague for a few good reasons on some of this stuff, but it's fine. It just became really clear that I needed to make a decision, and it was either I needed to get everybody on board with our core values, or I needed to just have a real, honest conversation that I just don't think this is going to work out. And anytime I have to do that, unfortunately, the the the last few people that have left our team have been a decision that we've made internally as a leadership team to part ways with them. We never like to do that, and we want things to be very amicable. But it started, it starts to creep into that toxicity, right? It's just, it's a cancer across the team. You can see morale lowering at a similar time frame, I sent out an employee an anonymous survey on how things are going, how to, you know, just things, just trying to get some anonymous feedback from folks. And it was really hard. It was really hard to read. And I knew that in potentially my absence, or my husband's absence, or any leader on the team's absence, when the employees are just kind of coming in and they have to fend for themselves, right? Get the work done, communicate together, have their own team meetings. And when I say in my absence, my role, and Jesse's role very much, is in the field, we have to client interface all day long. So we don't get to just sit in the office for, you know, eight hours, three or four days a week alongside our team, as much as we would like to. But it's very apparent during those absences that a lot of that damage was starting to happen. And I saw some of our best and most loyal employees almost losing a little bit of faith, you know, in the company, and questioning maybe if they should be here or not. And so just felt like I had to start all over again, right? I needed to, and it wasn't like we had to clean house. I just needed to move a few positions on, and we've done that, and, you know, on our and so now we're, you know, we're always thinking about, well, how do we and then the other biggest challenge is, how do you build a bench? How do you get new people in your wheelhouse, so that when these things happen, you can just start having really rich and intentional conversations with new folks without alerting or making your current team feel like they're being replaced, which is really hard as a small business owner, right? Because we use social media, and everybody's on LinkedIn, and everybody can see when you're hiring. So part of my HR class that I'm taking is to kind of learn some strategies on how we can, you know, engage our community at large for opportunities that might just, we might just always be looking for, and you never know it. We don't always need to replace people. We have, very frequently added to our team and circumstances that we didn't even know that we were preparing to do.
Mark D. Williams 07:34
I think some of the I feel like small companies like you and I, we often think of like the Brad Levitt of the world that have 30 employees, or they have the luxury of it seems like Brad has always talked about how he can onboard because, you know, he's looking at projects two to three years from now, like his pipeline is so far out, so it allows him to which I think there's a huge advantage to that. I mean, I'm sure the flip side of that we should have Brad on this is, imagine what his monthly overhead is compared to ours. And that's a serious there's always going to be a stressor, regardless of what it is, if it's if you have a team keeping them happy, if you're trying to grow your team. You know you always hear it seems like my daughter was in this morning. She's nine. I did a little mini episode with May, and she interviewed me. She said, What's the hardest part about Oh no. She said, What do you do when you're not busy? And I remind it was reminded of an old quote my dad used to always say it. Always say it, you know, if you're not busy being busy, then you better be busy getting busy. And like, regardless, you're busy. And like, it seems, there's just a lot of busy in that sentence, obviously, but, but I think it's true, activity breeds activity, and when we're really busy, at our own detriment, when we're focused on our clients, then all of a sudden, it's like you have six burners on your stove, and you're kind of only focusing on one or two, but the other ones are still burning. It's kind of like you're kind of just you can't I think that's what it is to be a small entrepreneur. I honestly don't know anybody that has it figured out, and I haven't decided yet if that's encouraging or discouraging. It's encouraging because that means that I don't have the answer, and neither do you. We're always learning and we're always adjusting. The negative side of that is that means there'll never will be an answer. So that means you're kind of signed up for a lifelong journey of, I don't know, struggles the right word, but like adapting and balance, rebalancing, right? Well,
Katie Kath 09:16
in in a, you know, retaining the right people is one step right. The next step is now that we have, well, I guess, retention, now that we have everybody here. Now what right how do we keep them here? How do we keep investing? How do we keep, you know, injecting some fun team events, culture, you know, some learning opportunities. How are we growing together? And so now we're, I feel like we're more laser focused on now that we're all we have the right people in the room. How do we keep them here? And so some of the exercises, you know, a lot of the discussion and reasonable hospitality, too, that I'm excited to start bringing to my team is something we really need to do is slow down so we can speed up and really just taking time to nurture our current projects, our homeowners, our team members. Guys, our subcontractors, our guys in the shop who work tirelessly to put together the work that we design and ask them to do, and the deadlines that sometimes aren't always attainable, but we really are in a season of life right now, just everyone take a breath, slow down, and then we can speed up, versus just getting through it, meeting a deadline and then looking back and say, oh boy, our punch list is quite a bit longer than it needs to be, but we probably just sped through a few things too quickly, and that's always been our we live in the details. It's our hashtag, where it's our trademark. We've always been intentional about kind of a slower, more, not slower, but more methodical process of how we get to the finish line. And I just think so much from like COVID, and we've been drinking through a fire hose, and the work has been great and healthy and coming at us, and this year looks really different. I mean, it's still a decent year, but it's not the years we've had in the last five or more years. So now it's focused on people in a big way. It's hard.
Mark D. Williams 10:54
I think it's almost like a temperature gage. How do you get comfortable? Sometimes you're too hot, you're too cold. You know, there's so many analogies that come to mind here. RPM of a car, you're running too hot, you know, you burn out. And I think, I don't know. I think balance and rebalance is kind of the name of the game. It's really, you mentioned about slowing down. It's probably one of my biggest weaknesses is, yeah, is is slowing down. And sometimes it's people that slow us down. Sometimes it's events in our life, like illnesses or health. I think only, I only speak about it because Brad's spoken publicly about it a lot. You know, our good friend Brad, you know he had a stroke two years ago, right? He had a little, I think it's called P flap or something, on his heart where gave him a scare. And so it was just interesting reflecting about why we're doing this. And I think we're really in a unique position, building people's homes and working in their homes, we get so intimate with their families, and we do sometimes focus on the negative, right? Maybe it's just me, because there's a lot of with a lot of heightened expectations, there's a lot of heightened stress and things like that. But, but it is also really it. There's not very many businesses that are that you get the highs that building gives you, either, and, you know, making a meaningful impact in people's lives. You know, I know you guys do incredibly high end work, and it's beautiful, but i i Sometimes, as builders lately, I feel like I've been saying this message a lot. But, you know, regardless of the quality of the home, and that's like a separate conversation, like, you're still building a home, and it's still where someone is living and eating and sleeping and sharing memories. And, like, I think that's something to be applauded, regardless of what strata you're in, because it's really important. And I think at our own detriment, when we get so focused on rushing people through that we don't always give them the best experience either. I mean, you mentioned unreasonable hospitality. I mean, can you imagine if you took a five star restaurant and made it into a fast food chain, where you're just, like, crushing the turnover, forget the, you know, the pleasantries of your drinks and, you know, testing in it's like, how quickly can I turn this table? Like, if someone was pressured to eat all the time, like they would not have a very good experience. And yet, we do that all the time in building, and plus, the clients want it too. It's like, how much faster can you go? It's not like a client ever tells you, hey, Katie, slow down a little bit. Let me enjoy the process like that just doesn't
Katie Kath 13:02
happen. It's been so eye opening for me this book. I came from the hospitality industry, right? I owned a wine bar in Minneapolis, and definitely it wasn't a five star five dining, but it was a fun little neighborhood, little cafe area to come have some good tapas and appetizers and wine. And I've always felt there's so much synergy between that space and construction. And I can put a lot more words around it and and, you know, there's, there's so much truth to it. I mean, we in the hospitality space, we delight our guests in the first five minutes, in the last five minutes, right? How quickly can you get them a beverage? How quickly can you bring them the check? I mean, those are the two pivotal points that they're paying a lot of attention to. And it's very similar in the in the industry, or the construction industry, you know, how quickly are we spending to their emails and getting their pricing and updating all the pre construction? They're just so excited. And then in the end, it's like, guys clean faster, punch list quicker. And it's kind of everything in the middle. I mean, while it's all very important, I think how we start and how we end every project, we're only as good as our last project, right? We're only as good as the way we show up in the beginning and then in the end of those projects for our homeowners. And when you're and you and Melissa touched on it in your podcast with oho interiors, you know, we're transforming the space where people come home every day, right? They may have had the worst day. They may have lost somebody close to them in their life. They may have had to fire an employee that who knows what they had to do that day. Maybe they're in medical and they had to do a surgery or something that was really challenging that day, we're creating a space that they get to come home to and reset and refocus and find safety. And I used to always say, we're not saving lives. We're not but we're creating a really big impact on those lives. And I feel like our industry is a little undersold when it comes to that, too.
Mark D. Williams 14:47
This episode of The Curious builder is brought to you by olivin vine socials. If you're a builder, a designer or an architect looking to grow your brand without dancing on Tiktok or spending your whole life on social media, listen up. Olive. Social specializes in Pinterest marketing, blogging and email strategy for luxury home brands, they help you turn your beautiful work into a strategic SEO driven content that drives real traffic and connects you with your ideal clients without burning you out ready to grow smarter and not harder. Visit olivenvine socials.com and tell them the curious builder set you just so you know, I've been working with Alyssa over at Olive and Vine for three years. She helped us launch the podcast. She's helped us grow our brand at Mark Williams custom homes. I could not do what I've done without her help, and I'm more than happy to announce that she's our latest sponsor for the curious builder podcast. Lake society magazine is Minneapolis, Premier target market boutique lifestyle and design publication. It embodies the unique lifestyles and design of the Minneapolis city lakes neighborhoods from Lake of the isles to Lake Harriet. It showcases the best in local design projects by both premier builders, architects and interior designers in this area. Lake society magazine has the look and feel of a national publication with glossy covers, high end finishes. It's mailed directly to upper bracket single family homeowners in the city lakes area, and it's the perfect local coffee table top publication. Subscriptions can also be available through the website, Lake society magazine.com additionally, publisher and founder, Karen Steckel, has over 27 years in the local magazine publishing industry and has a passion for high end photography and quality graphics, her commitment to quality, visual simplicity and beauty are strongly reflected in her beautiful lake society magazine. I think you just set up something for me. I'm thinking of like a fulcrum, of like a teeter totter, and we're in the middle. And if you're not watching this, maybe you can watch it. But I'm thinking like you have homeowners over here, and you have your people here, and you're in the middle, because you might, you might be balancing your cabinet shop, or your painters expectations and price and cash flow and their business and whatever issues they're dealing with in their life, and then the homeowners over here saying, faster or slower, it's like and we're all we have to as the professional in the room. I mean, we're all professional, except the clients don't have to be is we have to show up professionally. We have to show up kind of neutral. You know, not that we're humans. We all have good days and bad days, but we have to, sort of, we have to sort of limit our bad days. No one's going to really get too upset with you if you have too good of a good day, except for me. Sometimes my sometimes I do get told I need to calm down because I'm too happy. Like, that's maybe a me problem. And the point of it is, is like we have to kind of be, we kind of have to show up and be kind of like, on, you know, you have to be on, like, all the time,
Katie Kath 17:24
all the time, and it's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot, absolutely. And, you know, we're also rebalancing our cabinet schedule for the summer, and it happens, and we live and die by those schedules we put out there. It's so hard, and that's another big lesson. It is still so hard for us to look at those schedules and admit that we have to change it like we're just a couple weeks behind, and it might not even be a product of our team. It's typically a product of what's going on in the field, and that could just be a down, like a domino effect from subcontractors and other projects they're working on, other builders they're working for. I mean, it's just, we just can't control everything, so just coming up with the right language and communication to look at our homeowners and say, Hey, we need a few more weeks, and here's why, but it's pretty common, right? This is construction. We just can't predict how it's going to go. Our schedules are just an example and not a guarantee of where we're headed. So we try, early on in our in our sales process, to use that language often and make sure to remind homeowners that this is an same thing with pricing. It's a really good example of how your project will will show up. But we don't know. We just don't know. We don't know until everything is signed off, on and approved, and countertops are selected and slabs are held and appliances have been ordered. I mean, we could go in with, you know, a thermometer package, and walk out with Wolf subzero, which seems to happen more and more often, which is a great problem to have, but that'll shift your budget pretty dynamically. So I don't know it's loosening up. I want to, like, loosen up our parameters, right? I feel like homeowners want us to like we want we want three bids. We want it to be this. We hate change orders. Everyone talks about change orders. We don't ever want the schedule to change, but it's like, my goodness, this is a home that you're going to live in potentially for the rest of your life, or that you want this home to you want this home to hold up for the duration you're in. Give us a little bit of grace, like give us some room right to breathe and do things the way that they need to get done. And know that we always have, always have our clients best interest at my in mind when we are making those decisions.
Mark D. Williams 19:16
If you were to look back at your career so far, is there anything that in the moment felt like a fail or felt like you really stubbed your toe? But now, after years have gone by, you look back and you're like, that was a really important growth milestone for me in our business.
Katie Kath 19:34
Okay, I'm gonna say it. I wasn't gonna go there, but I'm gonna go there. We were. Yes, we had, pre pandemic had lost, well, pandemic just started, we'll just say just started, and we had lost all of our contracts for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, that situation was short lived, and a lot of our work came back within a few months. But we had probably a three or four month season where we were. Down to just one project, and we had a smaller team, and we decided to build our own home during that time, so with two projects. And there are some days where it's like, Oh, do you remember when we just like, did a project at a time and point? The reason why I share that is that we had really nothing but time and a pretty small but robust might everybody a team. Everybody wanted to work. Our subs are looking for work. We were ahead of schedule. I mean, we just, I felt like, I look back on them, like, wow, we, like, had a really good template in place for that project. If we could lift the process out of that project and cement it now, I would still feel really confident with how we were handling the timing, the process, decision making, next steps I will never know the answers to it or why it happened, but the homeowner did decide to part ways with us and hired an attorney and sued us for quite a bit of money, for an amount way exceeding the cost of the renovation. And we were small business. This is our we are still a small business. Is our only project. Not only were we, you know, out a few $100,000 of work that we had performed, but we were also out the remainder of the project that was on balance, to be paid. And it, I'm like, sort of thankful that we went through that process. I just don't have any regrets. It was the most painful, emotional, dramatic small business event we've ever had to ride. I have never had so many legal conversations, so much advice, guidance, support, a lot of fear, a lot of sleepless nights. And in the end, some of the best legal advice that I got was, don't fight it. Just Just get out of it. Just get out of it. Regardless if you're right or wrong, just get out of it. Figure out what they need. Get out of it and move on. Take this as an opportunity to reset your business, refocus, get your contracts rewritten. Look at some different processes, procedures, take an inventory on your team, learn from it and grow from it. And every single decision that we make moving forward is really from that lens. Will a homeowner ever feel like they need to fire us and sue us, which is kind of like the second part, right? And I can, kind of, you can kind of see some of those, not that we assume our homeowners are litigious, but I think even within our community, you'll hear other folks talking about situations. And I kind of right there, I'm like, Oh, you need to be really careful, really, really careful with how you're handling that situation and or that homeowner. Because you can kind of hear some and I think too, we look back on everything that led up to that, and the seeds were planted early by our homeowner. It didn't help that our homeowner was also an attorney. But we, a lot of our clients, are attorneys, and I they, I don't even think they would ever dream of getting in a situation like that with with us. But the seeds are planted early. We just missed the red flag a lot of times.
Mark D. Williams 22:39
I mean that, yeah, that's very well said. Thank you for sharing that. I think you know you don't know what you don't know. And you know a few things. I mean, I had a similar experience, similar timing, not all the same. But I guess what I was left with is no one ever tells you about sort of the toxicity that, the latent toxic, toxicity that just sort of lays in the background, unlike, let's call it like a physical fight, like it happens and it's over and it's done, but like a legal fight, or like a, like a simmering feud, if you will, like it goes for months, years, and there's just kind of the sits in the it just kind of sits and it just kind of is invasive. And, yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't know how you would. I think it's important that you probably go through it. I agree with you, in a sense, that I'm much better prepared for the future because of difficult situations like you just mentioned, right? I also think I remember going through it and being like, well, I guess someday, if I ever do consulting, this is well before the gears builder. I was like, at least now this is, this is me, like, going through like school or like education, or your master's program in business, it's kind of like a war veteran. I mean, I kind of get why, like, if you've been in battle, in this is, I guess, metaphors abound here. But like the once you've gone through something, you can speak to it to a different level. And honestly, it's true about anything in life, a marriage, relationships, you know, long distance, races of short distance. It doesn't matter. It's all once you've gone through it, you're now better prepared to face it again. And it's like, no, a lot of times we don't want to go through those difficult things, like you break your leg, or you lose a loved one, or whatever it might be. But that is life, and what you do after it really defines how you can handle the future and honestly, how you can help other people.
Mark D. Williams 24:28
This episode of The Curious builder is brought to you by Olive and Vine socials. If you're a builder, a designer or an architect looking to grow your brand without dancing on Tiktok or spending your whole life on social media, listen up. Olive and Vine social specializes in Pinterest marketing, blogging and email strategy for luxury home brands, they help you turn your beautiful work into a strategic SEO driven content that drives real traffic and connects you with your ideal clients without burning you out ready to grow smarter and not harder. Visit olivenvine socials.com and tell them. The curious builder said. To you just so you know, I've been working with Alyssa over at Olive and Vine for three years. She helped us launch the podcast. She's helped us grow our brand at Mark Williams custom homes. I could not do what I've done without her help, and I'm more than happy to announce that she's our latest sponsor for the curious builder podcast.
Katie Kath 25:17
And it's business too, right? It's the cost of doing business, and as business owners, it's, it's hard to not take it personally to review all the texts or the that was also like, no more text, no. And I'm not a good texter when it comes to work, I look, you know, I'll have, like, friendly conversations clients. But we don't make decisions in text. Did
Mark D. Williams 25:35
you end up putting that in your contract? That's a good question. I don't think we have it. We have in our contract. Yeah,
Katie Kath 25:42
we don't have in our contract. We just don't. I mean, I can't say that our entire team is great about it, but it's also a boundary thing too, right? I feel like I just get, yeah, I know we're making decisions in texts. We were able to kind of firm up a different way, you know, and it's hard to tell clients early on. Hey, look, we can exchange texts. We might be talking about when we're going to swing by the house, or we need to make a surprise visit, et cetera. But we can't decide on tile or light fixture or do anything via text or talk about pricing, none of that, none of the monetary things go through text. But the cost of doing business sometimes is that you go through some legal situations, right? And it's just not it doesn't need to be personal. It doesn't mean that we've done anything wrong. We are human. We show up imperfectly. We're supposed to. We learn and we grow. But at the end of the day, if we can be a little unreasonable, right, about our our how we interact with our clients in a really healthy way, and over deliver, and I love to say that we do things like love and we'll nurture and take care of our clients. And it's not going to be perfect, but we will make sure that it's about as perfect as we are humanly possible of making it for them. If there is a mistake or an issue or punch list item that seems to linger, we just, you know, we have to trust the process. But yeah, hard stuff for sure, and it's, and it's like, unfortunately, a lot of these hard things, right? I'm sure in your the series that you're launching, you'll, you'll get through all of the topics of conversation. That's 90% of what we do every day. That's what we come to work to do. We solve problems, we put out fires, we mitigate, we reconcile, we negotiate. And then there's 10% of it right where we get to grab our phone and go on a job site and do a tour and capture all the fun moments. And do
Mark D. Williams 27:16
you ever how often do you get people? I'm not going to say her name because I think she listens to the show, but I have, there's a couple people that reach out to me fairly regularly, and it's take it first of all as a with gratitude and very much thankfulness. But they're like, We love your company. We love your energy. We love we really love to join your team, to be sales, to be on your sales team, and we'd love to interact with your clients and really just be responsible for them to have this great and I'm like, sounds amazing. I wish I had something. I wish I had someone. I wish I had enough money to have a dedicated person that all they did was put mint on the pillows for these, you know, clients and have this great experience. But the truth of it is, is we all sort of have to do that all the time. And, you know, people see again, we're marketing, you know, very specifically. And it's not that building a home isn't great and the end is wonderful, especially once they move into the home, like the rose colored glasses, a lot of the a lot of the drama, and it's like running. I relate everything to running right now because I'm just in the middle of a lot of training. So it's like, when you're done with your marathon, you sort of forget how difficult mile 20 was, proverbially, yeah, like you're done with it, like, now you're like, you're in the glow of I finished this race. I feel great. That's building. I mean, there are different. There are times where you just feel really in the trenches, and there are times you feel great. And the difference is, is like the client has to do that one time. You and I do that, like 10 to 20 times a year with 20 different people.
Katie Kath 28:34
Yeah, we keep signing up for it. We keep signing up for it. That's for sure. Well,
Mark D. Williams 28:37
I want to respect everyone's time and yours as well. This was meant to be 20 minutes, it looks like we got a lot of good nuggets out of this one. So thanks for volunteering your time and and for coming on to share some life lessons. Yes, thanks for having me. We've had the podcast now for two and a half, almost three years now, and we have a consulting page, one to one consulting you can book my time for one hour. Perhaps you've heard a guess where you like one of the topics. Maybe you want an introduction to some of introduction to some of the guests that I've had on. Perhaps you want to talk about branding or marketing or anything that we've covered on the podcast over the last two and a half years. You can book a time at curious builder podcast.com 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.