Episode 60 - Losers are Winners: From Massive Debt to Entrepreneurial Wisdom with Paul Krumrich
Episode #60 | Losers are Winners | From Massive Debt to Entrepreneurial Wisdom with Paul Krumrich
In this Losers are Winners episode of The Curious Builder Podcast, Mark Williams sits down with Paul Krumrich for a super honest chat about the rollercoaster of being an entrepreneur. Paul opens up about his own big mistakes, like taking on risky debt and being maybe a little too honest with his team during rough times. They both talk about why willpower matters more than skills, the funny (and not so funny) side of failure, and how learning from flops is actually the key to winning in business.
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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Paul Krumrich 00:04
One big fail that was actually funny, which was deciding whether or not, during the really bad financial times to how much to share with the employees. Then all of a sudden, I'm like, walking by people's computers, and they're looking for jobs. And I was like, What are you doing? And they're like, Well, you said, Where's the ship sinking? Like, we're gonna we're going out of business. I'm like, No, I was trying to, like, motivate you to be like, we're down five nothing. We're gonna come back and win in the greatest comeback ever. And they're like, Nope, I'm out today.
Mark D. Williams 00:33
In the careers go to podcast. We have Paul krummerch on for our losers, our winner series, and we get pretty deep on a lot of a lot of topics. And like any owner, we struggle with ADHD how to balance it. You're going to love this episode. Without further ado, here's Paul. Welcome to cares builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host today, I've got Paul krumrich from Greenway solar, from spy, from Donkey label and whatever company he started yesterday, a returning guest from episode. Do you remember what episode you
Mark D. Williams 01:04
were no year and a half ago? If you want the whole, if you want the if you if you like this episode, you want the full, unfiltered Paul episode, go back maybe 50 episodes. We had Paul on for a one hour episode, but today is our losers, our winner series. Paul was kind enough to jump on to share just some things he's learned over his career of mainly about losing. This whole series, as those that have been following it is all about ways owners have stumbled their toes and hit their faces in adversity. I've had like three this morning, by the way, and basically what we learned from them and how we keep going, because I'm convinced that unless you lose, you don't really know how to win. So with that long intro, Paul, what's up, buddy? I'm much how you doing? I'm good. What on the ride in this morning, I rode my bike, and I was trying to think of all the different stories and which ones make sense. So we'll see what you got. What are some ones that come to mind? I think one I kind of shared in the time I did the podcast was taking a loan and using it for the wrong things. Yeah, that's a good one. We had for a while before, you know, we switched to just doing commercial audio visual. We used to do residential and we bought a condo penthouse in Bloomington and built it out to be place that we could have events. And that was 18 months before the 2000 whatever it was, financial crisis, which just blew that up in our face. There's the list goes on. So I guess we just, you zero me in on where we want to Well, you know, it's funny. Reminds me, actually, of a parenting thing. A parenting a business is somewhat serious. I are saying similar. I heard a great quote years ago, and it was, parenting is a contract with failure. Basically, it says, like, a series of mistakes. I always joke that, you know, when the baby come out, came out, there was no instructional manual of, like what to do, nor like how to, you know, work with your spouse through all that stuff too. So it's all loading on the job. So it turns out that business is just another, you know, synonym for life. And so I think it's true like you, you know, yeah, you can go to school, I guess, for entrepreneurship. But really, 95% of people that have a company didn't do that. They just wound up there and are trying to figure it out. You know, I will say that, and I agree. I mean, most of the owners that I know that have been on this podcast came into it sort of learned, if you will, school of hard knocks, and it's very valuable. Obviously, I think if I was to choose, well, let me ask you this question, if you had to choose between skill or willpower, which one would you pick? Willpower? Yeah, me too, all day long, because, I mean, it's if you think about it like a person other than us, or the type of person that does it would have quit 27 times, right? You know the risk the you know, like, you get to that point where you're like, Okay, this could go south and could get way worse. I need to get off now and just save what I've got and try to put it together, right? But don't, you, don't you think the risk tolerance is obviously much greater, but honestly, I think even understanding risk is sort of I can only speak for myself. I don't really consider risk, and maybe I should. Maybe I'd be more successful if I did, but maybe most owners don't like I'm not saying don't understand your risk. I mean, I think it's super important you understand your numbers and your and I think as you get further in your career, the more you understand specifically about your numbers, your overhead, your work in process, all that stuff is super vital, like cash is your blood flow, without it, you die in the vine. So I'm not minimizing that, but I also I'm saying, like, if you're always analyzing your risk, you're never going to go anywhere. It's a little bit like, I know you love biking, right? If you thought about all the times you could crash on a crit, like you should not be racing a crit if you are downhill skier, and all you think about is crashing into the trees, you should not be downhill skiing like there is something to be said about looking forward, I guess. Get on soapbox here, but like, you know that, you know we have two eyes in the front of our head, not behind us, right? We're sort of meant to have forward momentum looking forward, if we spend the whole time looking back. Like that's a recipe.
Mark D. Williams 05:00
For disaster, in my opinion, I'm not saying you don't, I don't. It doesn't mean you don't stop and round the wagons and look and say, like, Hey, what did I learn? That's what this podcast is doing right now. But you got to go forward, right?
Paul Krumrich 05:10
Well, I think that's the point. Isn't you're not. I think some people feel like you're immune to the fear or the risk or I think it's the opposite, which is you don't dwell on it, you know it's there, but you also kind of feel like, well,
Paul Krumrich 05:26
that's not going to help. Like, I know that there's a low percentage that's going to work, but I'm going to make that percentage higher by making it work. And I think that's the attitude, which is the failure doesn't scare you. Like, no one wants to fail. Like, I think part of what keeps you up at night is not wanting to fail more than wanting to succeed, but knowing that if you just stay in your bed all day, you know nothing's going to happen, and so you got to will it to happen. And I think that's that's kind of the the skill of an entrepreneur is my, you know what I've always been told, and I think it's true, is, like, one of the few skills I have is just being able to sleep at night with the debt or with the risk or with like, some people just can't do it. They'd stay up all night and never sleep and freak out.
Mark D. Williams 06:13
You know, we have this ability to get up the next day and get after it, even knowing that, you know you might be pushing a rope uphill sometimes, you know. So I got a question for you. Do you think so I was thinking about compartmentalizing parts of your life, and maybe we should see a shrink. We could do it that maybe we'll get a group special if you and I saw a shrink together. But where I'm going with this is, and this was, it wasn't where I was intending to go, but it seems applicable. I wonder if, as an owner, we're used to compartmentalizing success, failure, different people, our employees, our work, our personal life, like we, we have all these little boxes, and we sort of contain them in this at least that's what I do. You contain them in these little and not that they don't bleed. I think organically they move like obviously, if things are difficult personally, it's going to make your way into your business. If things are great in your business, it'll things obviously permeate this membrane, of course, for instance, you know, it's just really been on my mind a lot. Like, we live a half a mile away from where the Annunciation shooting was, right? And so, like, it's pretty close to home, right? I've got little kids down the street, like we walk by that place all the time, and what parent isn't thinking about that, that being said, I don't know what to do with that information. Like I don't, and this is true of like, what I read about Gaza or the war in Ukraine, or, honestly, famines in Africa. I mean, I've always sort of wondered, like, what do you do with all this information that, yes, I feel empathetic towards it, yes, I feel sorrow, yes, I feel all those emotions. But I sort of like, don't sit and dwell on them. I kind of like put them in the box, I'm aware of them, and then I sort of move on. Do you think that's a entrepreneur mindset? Do you think that's a guy mindset? Is that, like, do you relate to what I'm saying at all, or not? Yeah, no. I mean, I, you know, I don't know the stats on like, ADHD or stuff like
Paul Krumrich 07:57
that, but I was, I've been watching the pit with my wife, this one of these HBO shows about this emergency room, and it just, I don't know if you've seen it, but it's, no, I've heard a lot about it, though, it's just a one day, and every hour is an episode, and it's a 15 hour day, right? And in one of the episodes we just watched, someone asked this doctor, because he goes from, like, telling someone their kid's not going to wake up to, you know, crazy stuff, you know, emotional roller coaster. And they're like, how do we do this? Like, how do you even get through a day? And the guy's like, because we have ADHD and anything else would be boring and we wouldn't be able to handle it, you know? And it's kind of that thing where he's he's going from crazy situation to crazy situation to crazy situation, and just finishing one, starting the next, not bringing in to the next room the crap that happened in the one before. And I kind of feel like that's, you know, I don't want to put our jobs like an ER doctor, but it's the mindset, or it's basically the personality traits that are somewhat similar, is basically, yeah, that you can handle a huge win and not like, go spend all the money and think you're rich and handle a huge loss, and not think we're out of business. We should shut it down. Like you temper everything, you know. And then some people, I'm sure, think we're crazy, because, like, how are you not excited about that, or how are you not depressed about that, or how are you able to just move into the next thing? But like, you're just kind of taking these deals individually and getting through the day of because, like, you know, like, what day goes by where it's not like, 15 problems, right, right? Or, you know, it's like, or if it gets really quiet, you're bored. It's kind of the classic thing. It's like, when your schedule is really full, you're like, Man, if I just had a couple hours. I mean, who hasn't said, like, if I could just have a couple hours? How much? And like, when meetings cancel, every owner's favorite thing is when your meetings cancel. Because you're like, Oh, you feel productive. Like, I can catch up. But if you have days on end where you have nothing that, you know, it's, what's that old saying, The Idle hands is the devil's workshop. I think it's like, you know, basically it's like, I'm not saying you get up to no good, but it's like, oh, I got time for a bike ride or a run, or I'm gonna start a new business rather than staying on point. And I think every blessing is occurred.
Mark D. Williams 10:00
Or every pro is a con to certain degree when it goes to the extreme. But I agree with you. I think, I do think the ability to sort of grasp a topic, let it go, grasp a topic, let it go, is also probably the dopamine hit that all of us are sort of attracted to. I'm not saying it's good. I think it's just part of what our I think just part of what makes a lot of owners you know who they are, right? I have to
Paul Krumrich 10:19
have to have a little bit of a crazy belief in what you what your vision is that's going to work right. Like you have to have that that no one else maybe agrees with or sees. You have to have that North Star that you're pushing towards. Because if you you take your foot off the gas, everyone else will too. So if you're not out there charging like the energy, I think, behind you, like you said, look forward, not back, starts to lag. And so that's, I think, the toughest part, I mean, going back to your original question about failure, is to get to where even I've gotten, there's been 1520 huge screw ups along the way. And some people can point those out as like a point of failure that you screwed up. And you can dwell on that too as an owner, like, Yeah, I'm not very good at what I do because of that. But then sometimes you got to give yourself a little grace to be like, but we're here, you know. And had I not tried that one, you know, we wouldn't be here, even though the three I tried before that or failed. For those that
Mark D. Williams 11:28
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Mark D. Williams 12:45
one of the things and people can tune back to your original story, and I'll give just the short summary if you want to add to it. But essentially, during the recession, you took out a huge personal loan to pay the salaries of your people, which from a heart standpoint, and from a care standpoint, was the right move. From a business standpoint, you basically said later, like in hindsight, I wouldn't have done that. Like the debt that you occurred because of that really handcuffed you for years to come. And if you were to face that situation again, you would handle it differently. All you can ever do, in retrospect is have kindness with yourself, or a little bit immersive, because, like, none of us have a playbook on how that all goes. Right in hindsight, you know, you look at covid differently. You look at the recession differently. Look, I mean, honestly, look at everything differently, of course, and all you can do is, and I don't even like predicting the future, like right now, you know, it's super uncertain times, and it seems even more volatile. But is it any different than it's always been? Sometimes, I think we get so caught up in and it's pretty wild right now all the different narratives that are happening. But like, sometimes you got to turn down the noise and, like, focus on the thing that is most at hand. And I had this morning. This morning I was my coffee maker wasn't working, so I had to keep on processing it. So I had more time than usual. And so I was looking at some YouTube clips about, like, the end of the financial markets, and I was like, Dude, why am I consuming this? Because, like, the end of day, like, if I have a couple jobs and I can, like, all I can control, like, I can't control the global economy. I can't control the interest rates. Like, there's so many things I can't control. How about I just come back to, what can I control? Right? And that's all any of us can really do, yeah.
Paul Krumrich 14:19
I mean, it's, I rode by your honey Hill this weekend and was thinking about it. Went from a sign in the street to now, looks like a legit development, you know. And so, like, even though rates are high and these are tough times, like it's happening, and I think stuff will continue to happen. And, yeah, we often decide, are we going to go full gas or try to temper our growth, or our goals based on, you know, like, and I don't know the answer either. I just think you're right. You got to be probably easier on ourselves than we are, but that drive is also what keeps us going. And so it's both sides of the coin in terms of like, the good and the bad of our personality types that get you to where this is, yeah, well, and if you ever stop.
Paul Krumrich 15:00
Not will be willing to fail, because, you, you know, it's like people say they get more conservative as they get older, right? Like, as a business owner does that? Is that what you should do too and get more conservative? Or is it like, because even look at now like your decision could be, let's go gangbusters, because everyone else is gonna be pulling back. We can go like, there's a spot for the person that goes even in a bad, you know, economy, same thing for us. I mean,
Mark D. Williams 15:25
it's everyone has different risk profiles, you know, I think of, like, obviously interest rates, or, you know, leveraging things like that. And I think everyone has to also be, sort of, everyone has their own unique situation. I think someone was mentioning the other day, like, what is risk? And the quote was essentially, as your skill increases, your risk decreases, or, sorry, competency decreases risk. And all I can relate it to is, like biking or skiing or some sport, because you and I love sports, but like, it doesn't mean that there's not risk. I mean, with the Tour de France is just over, and like, Todd, if I gotcha, is one of the most talented bikers. Talented bikers in the world. He still fell on his bike going 30 miles an hour. It doesn't mean he's going down a mountain pass at 70 miles an hour. Like he that is extreme risk. He's also extremely competent. And so it's like, I think as business owners, all you can do is mitigate the risks the best you can, but then acknowledge them. Be okay with them, like, and it's okay to slow down, like, in rainy conditions, you got to slow down. In difficult conditions, you got to slow down. I don't think the answer is to speed up, if it's, you know, that dangerous. But sometimes going slow is very dangerous, right? Yeah, sometimes you do have to put the you know, hesitation. I mean, the worst decision is to do nothing. Yeah, you know, I think go, stay, go. I think the best entrepreneurs I've interviewed are ones that they handle it quickly and they move on. Because if you just sit there and idle, it paralyzes your team and it paralyzes you.
Paul Krumrich 16:48
Yeah, I think, I think action, even if it's the wrong action, to me, is better than waiting right. And I tell my kids that for soccer, like the guy that gets hurt, it's not the one that makes the slide tackle, it's usually the one that you know like. So if you got to pick, oh, you know, and I kind of feel like it's that way too, like our job as leaders is to decide what to do, and I don't think you should make quick, crazy decisions, but you can't just be deer in the headlights either. And so Hey, crew, interest rates are high. Here's our plan. Here's what we're doing. Let's start tomorrow. That's better than oh gosh. What do we do? Like, acknowledge it, make a plan and move on, and don't be afraid to change that plan once you know better you know.
Mark D. Williams 17:29
So let me ask you this, and it's a bit of a edged question, do you if I just quickly give me your first response, don't think about the answer. Do you think of yourself as a leader?
Paul Krumrich 17:40
Yes. Why? Because I'm willing to have the energy and make decisions or the North Star for our organization. And I think when tough times arise, I put the company first before myself.
Mark D. Williams 18:01
Yeah, I'd say that's a mark of a good leader. I if I was to answer the question, the reason I thought about it is, if I was to, I don't actually consider my I know I am a leader, and I'm comfortable being a leader, but I don't consider myself a leader, if that makes sense. Like, I don't wake up in the morning and think, and maybe this is to my team's detriment. I don't think about like, oh, I should have a really clear vision for my team so they know what to do. I don't think, like, hey, lead by example. I mean, I am doing those things hopefully, but they're I don't give them enough time and space. It's actually something I could probably benefit from. Like, I like your you're a little bit more seasoned than I am. I like your answer that like I need to. I just read something this weekend that was basically like, what as owners of companies or leaders, what are things that we can do to help the people on our team? And it's have a clear vision, like, what is the purpose of your company? Your goal, whatever it might be. And yesterday, I was on, we're doing this, as you know, this spec home and deep Haven called misah, whose and I've kind of made it my one thing. It'll be about a two year project, meaning, like, from the time I created the brand to finishing it, I I wanted one thing that every day that dictates my action and everything else I do within Mark Williams Custom Homes, my building company, is somehow impacted by that one thing, you know. And so that's actually given me a ton of clarity. And I told my pm the other day we there was something that we had to redo, and my goal behind it was is, you know, maybe the brand or the company I used to be several years ago. And to be clear, like, we've always done really good work, but like, my goal now with this house is because we've set the bar so high, higher than, maybe it's even higher than we than we can achieve. And that's okay, right? It's okay to me. It's okay to to not hit the top. Like it's a goal, right? A marathon time, like you're going for your PR, but you're always going for your PR, whatever it is, like set something that is going to challenge you. And so I told my team, I said, I want this to be something that when not only we look at it, of course, we're proud of it, but I want other people to look at the commitment that we're making to quality like a couple nails are out of line that you never see on a second story. Yeah. And I said, I. Want to redo it. And I could tell my team was a little bit like, really. And I was like, Yeah, really. Because architects are going to look at that, designers are going to look at that. Like the future of our company is based on the quality of execution, and if we're not going to critique ourselves, well, then to that level, then we're inviting the public to do it. And to be clear, not nobody's perfect. Like, there will find 1000 things that I do wrong.
Paul Krumrich 20:24
It's kind of like the Apple thing, where Steve Jobs was worried about the circuits and how they looked on the inside of the computer. When everyone's like, no one's gonna see that. Oh, that's a guy like that. Yeah, he made them redesign the internal circuits to be beautiful, even though they were like, What are you talking about? Like, no one will ever open this up. He's like, I don't care.
Mark D. Williams 20:41
So it's the intention, Oh, I like, he's, I mean, he was a visionary. He had
Paul Krumrich 20:45
but I would say, you know, going back to what you said, like I am a de facto leader, because I stuck my neck out and started the company. But whenever I watch sports and I see the in, you know that now they have cameras everywhere, so you hear the coach, you know, the Vikings are of the Minnesota United talking to their players, then I think I'm not a leader, because I'm like, wow, I don't think I got that.
Mark D. Williams 21:05
I think they take I think it's, you know, if you were to say you were a coach, I think your mindset would be different. But that doesn't mean you're not a leader, meaning, like my company,
Paul Krumrich 21:15
I'm a good leader, I think, but not a great coach. So that's I've tried to hire good coaches because I'm not a great day to day manager of people, right? I'm good at selling, but I can I teach a team to sell, probably not, right? And so that's one thing lately we've done well, here has gotten some really good you know, if you're talking NFL, you know, the offensive line coach and the defensive line coach are amazing, right? And that's helping us really get to that next stage where I couldn't do it by myself because I wasn't good at those parts.
Mark D. Williams 21:50
Most owners, myself included, well, I think all owners, I mean, no one's good at everything, obviously, right? And most owners tend to be somewhat similar, because it takes amount of energy to take an idea and then start a business off of it. So they're usually charismatic, sales people, hard drivers, those kinds of things. But those qualities don't make them for a very nurturing environment often, right? And I think of like, you know, some of the best coaches usually. I mean, the best coaches are not the best runners or the best athletes. Like, when was the was Bill Belichick, you know, like the world's best quarterback. I don't even know if he played football, but, you know, and so like, that seems to be a pretty common thing. And I was listening to founders as a podcast that I really like, and it's all about, you know, memoirs and biographies of people, but like, the owner of rollerblades, it's rollerblade started here, right?
Paul Krumrich 22:37
Yeah, my, my cousin's wife worked there. I had one of the earlier pairs when I was in college and rolling up road brain around
Mark D. Williams 22:45
campus. Anyway, the short version of it was, he was super charismatic, awesome idea one of one, but he just couldn't scale. And eventually he lost control of his own company because he couldn't empower other people. And this is the short version. I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that, but, you know, I think a lot of owners fall I don't think I'm great at scale personally. And now, as I've gotten older, like, I kind of want to do mini scale, but, like, I also don't really want to either. And I think as we look at failure, you know, sometimes we can be harsh on ourself and say, Well, why don't you get further in your career? And who you judging it against? At the end of the day, we're all racing our own race. You know, I think as you get older, hopefully you realize that, you know, you're not really beating anybody, except it's just, what are you happy with and what is your internal engine and family and circumstances sort of dictate, in my opinion, I I just equate so many things to sports that, right? You know, you become very you just become realistic. I'm not saying I'm not competitive. I'm not saying I don't want to beat somebody all those things, but like, can you also find the joy in it? Can you find, like, the self satisfaction in a job well done? I think those are honestly more meaningful than saying, like, oh, I beat out XYZ company, whatever.
Paul Krumrich 23:52
Well, I think, I mean, all of us are somehow deeply competitive people. Because you get into, I personally think, you know, you play sports as a kid, or you're competitive with school, and then you get into this next arena, which is a business owner or whatever, and the scorecard is kind of growth or financial it's like these weird things that you then get caught up in, in terms of winning and losing. And then you hopefully get older, and having kids and stuff gives you some perspective on what's important. And then you realize, okay, maybe that's not the the scale I need to measure. And then what is the new scale? And that's, like, your point, like, maybe it's a balance, or maybe it's staying local instead of being a national, you know, like, not traveling as much, like, you know, all the different things, and that's some gray hairs and wisdom hopefully comes to us all, but that's, I think, the next phase of it, which is maybe my risk profile is still the same, but now I'm looking out for other people a little bit more. So my risk profile that I take action on goes down a hair, but it's hard, because what got you here is kind of that opportunistic ability to take risk and to see things others. And make a move quickly. So you also don't want to give up on that, because that's kind of your secret sauce. Yeah.
Mark D. Williams 25:07
I mean, I think drive is, I think, and also if you're not, if you're not being fulfilled, if you're not being creative, if you're not finding energy in what you're doing, like, it seems like the exit is pretty close, yeah.
Paul Krumrich 25:18
I mean, it's funny that I was at a soccer tournament with Torben, is on a new team, and one of the doctors an ER doc, you know, and I was talking to him about his job, and he's like, Well, yeah, it's all a bunch of us with, like, I said, ADHD. And I'm like, Well, I probably would have been a good doctor. And he's like, Yeah, but look at what you got here. He's like, it's kind of the same thing. You got this and that, and it's keeping your mind going. And so you've got a similar thing that you've built, which is what I have kind of with always someone new walking in the door. And what do I do, you know? And so you find your spot with your personality, you know. And so I think you said earlier, just probably being a little kinder to ourselves is step one.
Mark D. Williams 25:56
Yeah, you know. I think I remember. It's funny as you get older, all these for me, it's my dad had all these adages that when I was a young kid, I didn't get them, or I understood what they were, but now they just have so much more meaning. So some of them come up to mind while we've been talking. One was steady at the helm. I say that. I actually say that a lot, you know, to my kids, too. Or just, hey, you mentioned it before. When things are really good, you do really great. Don't go buy something crazy. And when things are really bad, like you just kind of got to ride the highs and the lows. And that's that's a hard lesson to learn, because, you know, of course, we'd love to be and it's not that we're not excited, but I wonder if correct me, if I'm wrong, but going back to the more the more the big mass things that happen in the world, like wars and famine and some of these terrible things that happen. I wonder if we've been conditioned to sort of be steady at the helm that we at least for myself, I find that I don't react as viscerally as because I kind of just stay sort of neutral through it all.
Paul Krumrich 26:46
Yeah, I mean, I think it's I kind of like, if I could change anything about my personality, would probably be a little bit more, not emotional. But, you know, like, you're kind of trained to just study at the helm. And then sometimes people are like, Why don't you care. Why are you? You know? Like you're not excited about this and everyone else is, or you're not bummed, you know. And so it's hard to make yourself react when you're not naturally, probably not do that, but I do feel the same way, like I should care more about certain things that I'm okay with, just kind of moving on, and that's probably not good.
Mark D. Williams 27:22
I don't know. I don't know. I How much of it is just the makeup that you are. Like, let's call it empathy, like, you know, but
Paul Krumrich 27:29
like, I'll, I mean, I'll cry at Rudy, you know, about right? Like, dad and his kid and like that. To me, I get emotional over but like you said, things that are maybe not that, you know, because maybe I have an attachment to that as a kid and a dad or whatever, yeah, but for some reason, like, those things get me and then other things that should,
Mark D. Williams 27:51
don't, you know, you know, it's interesting. You mentioned doctors. I know that they do. There are some, I mean, other jobs do have compartmentalization for good reasons. You know, I think, like, you know, if you're doing surgery on somebody, you know, if you're doing open heart surgery, they don't have, like, the head exposed and everything. Like, they, you know, they, they put cloths over everything. So you're just looking at just the heart. It's a tool, it's an organ. It's still living. I'm sure there's still emotion to it. But like, you do that enough times, it becomes routine, and you want it to be routine, because you wouldn't want your surgeon to, you know, their hand to be trembling and all that stuff. And I, you know, we're, you know, in this sense, like there is a place for compartmentalizing. I think at some you don't want to get jaded, yeah, I think we, I think that's where, like our spouses and our family, community, our friendships, you know, the people we spend time with. I think that helps us keep stay grounded. And I think it's important sometimes, sometimes you do need a kind of a little knock, like, hey, like, you need to, you know, pay attention. Because, yeah, I think you just need people in your life that sort of can help see when you need to kind of sort of be jostled. And sometimes you're just, you're fine, just the way you are. Well, we've answered nothing. Thanks for that
Paul Krumrich 28:58
stricter logic. Yeah, we went, we went around and something
Mark D. Williams 29:01
that's all right, that's all that's just, that's what a podcast is. You just talk, see, we're just talking about our feelings.
Paul Krumrich 29:06
Well, I can't give you one, one big fail that was actually funny, which was deciding whether or not during the really bad financial times to how much to share with the employees. And so I was young, and I was like, You know what? I'm going to just be super open and honest. I'm going to tell them exactly what's going on, right? And then all of a sudden, I'm, like, walking by people's computers, and they're this is this will date the story, but they're on monster.com looking for jobs. And I was like, What are you doing, you know? And they're like, Well, you said, Where's the ship sinking? Like, we're gonna, we're going out of business. I'm like, No, I was trying to, like, motivate you to be like, we're down five, nothing. We're gonna come back and win and the greatest comeback ever. And they're like, Nope, I'm out. You know, that's so awesome. We don't tell everyone everything, you know, because I'm like,
Mark D. Williams 29:49
I think the shared vision, you're right. I think it's the shared vision. It's a little, I mean, going back to the kid thing, like, I think it's important to tell your kids what's happening the world, but like, you don't share every single scary thing. Like, I don't want my kids. I. Walking down thinking that they're not safe anywhere either. So it's a hard balance, but that's true of business, too. Yeah, I think it's important, you know, the last couple years for us, you know, financially, things were more difficult. I think the people saw it. I don't know how much I talked about or didn't talk about. I think they could see the stress or hear the stress, and as things have gotten better, like, you sort of also want to reward those people. So like, you know, we sort of did a, you know, a freeze on salaries for a little while, and then when we kind of came out of it, we're like, you know, we want to reward the people that stood by us, right? And then, you know, and so I think that's what, I think the common goal, the star, you talked about, the North Star, like, this is where we're going. This is what. And I also think we need them to know, because they we need their help to get there, you know, I'm doing, this thing right now where I'm having all the subcontractors sign the house. I had this idea a little while ago, and so I have just never implemented it. So today I had my framers sign some two by sixes. It's just, it's a small gesture. Yeah, I should have told them about it when they started framing, versus at the end. Because the idea is like, if you're going to put your name on something, you're probably going to consider it and be more thoughtful about what you do with it. And I had the HVAC guy, it was so funny. So his name's Lennon, shout out to him. The guys, you know, he's a young kid. He's 26 years old. Super excited, but he's on camera, and all I want him to say is, like, go up there and sign this, you know, this duct work. He's like, Yep, this is only the second house I've ever worked on, and I'm so excited to be here. We was so awesome. It was so real. It was a hot take. And so, I mean, we'll post it. I mean, why wouldn't I it's real? And I guess, you know, it's funny, I send it to his boss, and I just kind of said, Hey, I'm really excited about the work that he's doing. He was so excited to be part of misah, who's and, like, he's great jazz. And I just kind of said, like, there is someone who's over oversighting on this guy right in the bot. And his boss was like, Yeah, but we also think that the best way to learn how to swim is just put him in the deep end. And if he makes it, he makes it. I'm like, You know what I got you, buddy? I mean, I can't preach out here. I can't preach on a podcast and say I want young people in the work and then be a hypocrite when I got a young guy saying, like, Yeah, this is the second house I've ever worked on. I'm like, oh boy,
Paul Krumrich 31:59
you gotta, you gotta start somewhere, right? So, yeah.
Mark D. Williams 32:03
So anyway, he was super grateful. Well, I don't want to take up any merry time. It's officially the longest Thursday episode because we got too many good stories. Um, thanks for coming on a short notice.
Mark D. Williams 32:11
Appreciate it. Yeah, you got it. Thanks for
Mark D. Williams 32:14
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