Q & A Episode 61 - Losers are Winners Part 9: Burnout, Boundaries, & the Wake-Up Call That Changed Everything with Tyler Grace

Oct 1

Episode #61 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Burnout, Boundaries, & the Wake-Up Call That Changed Everything

Builder. Dad. Almost burnout casualty. Tyler Grace joins Mark for a raw conversation on why “doing what you love” can still land you in the ER. They dive into stress, ego, profitability, and how Tyler finally drew a line between life and business. Come for the honesty, stay for the dad jokes—and leave with a better plan for your own business sanity.

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 00:00
For those that have been listening to curious builder podcast, you know how much I love the contractor coalition Summit. It's been the single biggest force multiplier in my business over 21 years. We're excited to announce again that we're coming back to Chicago November 7 through the 10th. All the details can be found at the contractor coalition summit.com and under the promo code for a $2,500 discount, type in curious builder. We'll see you in Chicago.

Tyler Grace 00:27
I've switched my mentality and my focus on what's more important to me, and I basically switched the roles of work and personal life to put more emphasis on maintaining a better personal life, and just using my business as a tool to do that, rather than my business being every ounce of my self worth.

Mark D. Williams 00:56
Welcome to the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host today is Thursday or Tuesday, the day we're recording this, and we've got our Thursday series. Losers are winners. And so I thought of the biggest loser I could con into coming onto this podcast. He was not available. So instead, I get TRG zone, Tyler grace, co captain of the contractor coalition, co host of the modern craftsman, and stud dad to two awesome girls, the best husband on the planet. What's up to

Tyler Grace 01:24
you? Keep going. Keep going. Good. I don't know what I'm getting myself into, to be honest. So we're just gonna roll with it.

Mark D. Williams 01:31
We're just gonna roll with it. So we've been doing this series for a couple months. Basically, I interview people for 20 minutes on Thursdays. And you know, we learn way more from losing than we do from succeeding. And so I was just thinking, professionally or personally, whatever you want to share, basically, how have you sucked? How have you made? What are some big mistakes you've made that you know you've been in your career now for multi decades. You look back and you're like, Wow, that was at the time. It was really tough to have that happen, but now I'm so thankful it did, because I've learned so much, or, you know, and you talk about all the time on your podcast too, but just, I know I feel like in some ways it's hard to pick out which one, because there's so many, but there's a lot of them, like for myself, I could think of, but life or business, honestly, both, it doesn't really matter, because I think in some ways they're especially small entrepreneurs like us, like your life and your business are sort of intertwined, sometimes too much so. And a lot of our personal failures are a result of, you know, over committing into our business. A lot of times our failures are we, you know, we don't manage something in one and it affects the other. Yeah, honestly, go wherever we

Tyler Grace 02:36
want. Come on. Who's who? I thought I was a guest on this podcast. Let's go one, one thing that comes to mind is allowing my work or my my passion to be the the sole driver for every like, all of my self worth, everything that I did, I had work and I had nothing else. I didn't have hobbies. I put all of my stake and my self worth in my clients, client experience, pleasing my customers, and for a long time, it made for a really viable Not, not from a profitability perspective, but like, I had a ton of work. I had a ton of jobs coming in. The leads were flowing. I had great customer experience, but I was just burning myself out. I wasn't focusing on the right things, and I was I just kept saying that I'm doing what I love. I'm doing the right thing. I'm treating my customers. This will all pay off down the road. So that's definitely a huge thing for me. Is understanding that there needs to be a line drawn in the sand. You have to have some sort of separation between what makes you happy, your hobbies, your passion and business like they can overlap some but you can't. You can't allow all of your self worth to be dictated by what you do for a living. To me, that just wound up being a dead end road because I gave everything to my clients and I didn't take care of myself. I didn't take care of my family. I put everyone else first. So that's one very broad stroke of what I feel that I screwed up early on in business.

Mark D. Williams 04:16
How long did it take for you to realize or what was the aha moment? Or was there never an aha moment? It just It took a lot of time. How did you pull out of that nose dive, if you will? Because I agree with everything you said.

Tyler Grace 04:27
I burnt myself out. And I've spoken about this actually a handful of times recently, but I wound up just working myself to the point where I ended up in the hospital twice because I just wasn't sleeping. I wasn't eating properly. I was basically, I mean in short, I ran down all of my body's natural adrenaline to the point where I had a small allergic reaction to something, and my body couldn't fight it, and I went into anaphylaxis twice, and we didn't know why, and it was stress induced anaphylaxis. This is what we found out about it. I don't have allergies of that type, so I end up basically throat closing, up getting full body hives, getting rushed to the emergency room twice, just because I was so run down and I wasn't prioritizing health, sleep, my own personal life, family, anything like that. So I just realized that all of my fulfillment in life, all of my worth I pawned off on. I'm doing this for my family. This is for the bigger picture. And I realized in hindsight, that it was just what I wanted. It was all ego driven my kids and my wife, other than providing financially, contributing financially to the household. It was what I wanted to do, if they would have had the decision they they would have chose otherwise. So I realized that I was being very selfish, and I needed to change when I when I did that, I started digging into business more and creating that, that separation between my wants, my needs, my ego and business, and still trying to execute a really high level and have great customer service. But if a client's not happy, or I can't meet a client's needs or program, I'm not going to lose sleep over it anymore. I'm not going to say yes to everyone, and I'm going to understand that it's still going to be

Mark D. Williams 06:18
okay. You literally worked yourself to death or on the brink of it. How, if you were to look back, how many years ago was this? Do you think it was during covid? So if you were to look back now objectively, which you probably have a better ability to do, what warning signs, where I'm going with this question is, is maybe a listener out there? It hasn't reached the bottom and can't relate to this. Or they, they hear what you're saying, but they like, well, that's not for me. What were some warning signs, or what were some red flags? You know? What were things that either your spouse said or family or other people shared with you that you just weren't really in a, probably a mental place, that you could even receive it because you're just because a lot of times, you know, you ever do the thing where your your wife says something like, Oh, wow. You're like, yeah, I've told you that like, 10 times before. You just heard it this time. What were some warning signs?

Tyler Grace 07:10
I think I can get into a pretty relatively strong manic state when I, when I get driven like that, I'm just so intense. So the signs were all there. I think the biggest thing for me and the others others, who the heck has my phone on? That's a customer. So this your first time? Is this your first time on a podcast? Actually probably the first time that my phone rang on a podcast. Because I don't even amazing, I don't even know how it turned on off of silence, but that's actually a client that I don't feel like talking to right now anyway, so I the numbers basically with my business, and I think most people can probably relate, when you're small, the numbers at the end of the year seemed fine. I just never was being realistic with myself when it came to how many hours I was committing to projects. So what it looked as if I was making at the end of the year, if it were a normal job and I was working 4045, hours a week, it would have been great, but I was working 80 hours a week. I was working more. So I think being realistic with yourself and understanding that you have to be able to capture your time as a small business, and that none of us are making that much money. We're not ripping people off, you know, we don't all have Ferraris and multiple houses. We're just trying to get paid for our time. And I think that if I would have just realized what my time's worth all aspects of the business, swinging a hammer, paperwork, back end, running and picking up materials and meeting with clients, just conceding time for free to please people. I think there was a lot of red flags for how much time I was putting into jobs that I just never was accounting for, and I assumed that that was just the way the business had to be. And it wasn't until I got sick that I realized, hey, essentially everyone's getting paid for every hour that they work on my jobs, but me so I had to get rid of everyone, restructure and start figuring out, basically relearning how to walk. How am I going to how am I going to get back into business? How am I going to do these jobs where I don't I'm not paying people to do the work, and I actually can make money doing it. So once I got sick, there was a couple other things that happened personally at the same time, where I just said I'm going to start over from scratch. I'm going to do this the right way, I'm going to track all my costs. I'm going to keep it super simple, and I'm going to make a decent living not working 80 hours a week, and that's been a huge change in my life, both personally and professionally. So I the biggest thing to me would be, get rid of your ego. Be realistic with yourself about what you're making, and quit lying to yourself saying that you know this. Just this is a stage I'm in. At some point it'll be easier. I'm not going to work this hard if you're working that hard right now. It's not going to change unless you make a change.

Mark D. Williams 10:16
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Tyler Grace 12:49
But that's somewhat what I started the conversation with, that I think you need something to get into business because you love something. Is what we all do. And to me, oftentimes that's the wrong move, or I look back on it and it was the wrong move just because I enjoyed something. I probably shouldn't start a business because of it, because you are going to overwork, you are going to concede a lot of time, because you get that dopamine hit, because you like to push the boundaries, because you you enjoy the stress. I think that you need to look at business from the perspective of profitability. How much time you're investing, if you were able to sell your business, would somebody invest in it? And that's not to say that you shouldn't enjoy what you do. But I think when we enter into business, or we start a business because you say, I like building houses, or I like working with my hands, or I enjoy putting teams together. Whatever that is to me, that just becomes a crutch when you're not making money to say, Well, I'm doing what I love, I think it really can prolong a lot of the suffering because you're willing to put up with it, because, hey, this is my passion, and I if it weren't your passion, you would just be like, No, screw this. I'm not doing this anymore. This is dumb. I'm going to go do something else with my time. But being that you love it so much you allow yourself to continue to spiral and work for free and not capture your costs. And I just, I think it's foolish. In hindsight, I allowed what was my passion to negatively affect my business for 10 years.

Mark D. Williams 14:32
You know, we had, I had someone on the podcast, Chris Montana. He actually, dude already was owned a distillery, but he had two strokes before he realized it. He had a stroke at like 26 he was running for, he was helping a presidential campaign in DC. And then the second one was when he started his distillery. But just the point, like, literally, you worked yourself sick. You know, Chris had a stroke in, you know, hearing these stories, have you, as you've interviewed people. Or even seeing friends in your own friend network. You've bet you've been through this. You've seen it. What are things that you do now to make sure that you sort of stay on the right side, that you don't slip back into the old mindset of Tyler? Is that not that hard anymore? Or do you still have to sort of, sometimes, for me, it's like my spouse or my kids or, you know, it's, it's having other friends that are really close that you kind of have honest conversations with, or almost like, ask them, like, Hey, could you give me some feedback? Like, how am I doing? How do you sort of regulate yourself now, five years after, let's say, this kind of health scare, I know you're way more aware of it now, so you're probably, oh, it's not nearly as a danger, but I would imagine it, it's still probably in the back of your mind. Or do you or is it not, it's a non issue.

Tyler Grace 15:50
Now, I would say it's more of a non issue. I If, at this point, I just don't work as much. Now, I found ways to make money that I don't need to put 80 hours a week into it. So what was happening before is I was exhausting budgets. There was no money left in the job. I was closing the job out. Everyone's gotten paid. There wasn't enough to close the job out. So I would stay late, and I'd send everyone home, and I'd work to try and close the job out. So I just I found ways to provide value for my clients, where I'm not bending over backwards, conceding time and delivering you a masterpiece at the cost of a mid level renovation. If somebody wants that, they have to understand the cost and the time associated with and like a lot of that is just me. A lot of that was me wanting more for those jobs than my clients would have ever paid for had they understood the true cost implications of them? So I've just I found a way to operate in life and business where I have other hobbies, I have other ways to get an adrenaline fix. I try and maintain a healthy lifestyle. I just try not to work late anymore, especially with the kids getting older, there's always something or a game or an athletic event I want to be home for dinner. So I've just changed my lifestyle completely. I've changed my life to be the main focus and not my business. Before it was it was my life, my family, all was back seat to my business, and I basically just went 180 degrees from that where I use my business to support the life that I need. But that's not my identity. That's not how I get all my fulfillment in life. That's if something goes wrong at work, it's not the end of the world. I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I'm not going to worry about who knows if this happened, if that happened, or what somebody is going to say, I've just I've switched my mentality and my focus on what's more important to me, and I basically switched the roles of work and personal life to to put more emphasis on maintaining a better personal life and just using My business as a tool to do that, rather than my business being every ounce of my self worth.

Mark D. Williams 18:10
I got nothing, buddy. That's a, that's a mic drop right there. That's very well said. I appreciate it. I know you've got to go to another meeting. So I think that's about, that's about as distinct as someone could get if you missed that, rewind two minutes and listen to that on repeat that I miss very well said, buddy. For those that want to see Tyler in person, we still have some spots left for contractor coalition Summit. Oh yeah, Chicago, hard sell.

Tyler Grace 18:36
That's coming up quick too. I was just looking at my calendar today, and I was like, Damn

Mark D. Williams 18:40
Yeah, I actually just sent I just got to book my flights in and out. So, yeah, that's coming up in 36 days, very soon. I'm excited. Me too. It'll be good times to make it there. Oh, I'm there. Oh, you mean the audience. Oh, yeah, I know you're there. I'll have to sell it to you. Wait, that might be a detriment, but wait, Mark's coming. We're out. We definitely can't come. Yeah? We have a surprise guest, yeah. Surprise guest, oops. Actually, you know what? We actually will do this hot take. We are for the audience out there. We always thought, because obviously, we're recording on a podcast, and we do lots of this, but opening night, we're going to open mic eight minutes or less. You have to share your hardest story you've had in your career. We thought it'd be a really fun ice breaking moment. And I'm actually really excited for the hardest part will actually be not recording that, because I feel like there'll be such valuable stories. But if you are, if you are there, it is the only time you're going to hear some of these stories. So I think it's not really, I mean, it can be venting, if people want, but a lot of it's just cathartic, just sharing, like, Hey, this is something that's really difficult. I feel like you and I have talked so much about all the conversations that happen in between at contractor coalition are some of the highest points in the year in terms of how they impact you, both personally and professionally. And so I always get really excited

Tyler Grace 19:52
for those. Yeah, I think everyone will. It'll help serve as an icebreaker. People can let their guard down, and I think that's where a lot of the value. You from the entire event comes from just being open and honest and vulnerable. And the goal is, with this to allow some people the opportunity to let their guard down and tell some possible horror stories and get comfortable with everyone

Mark D. Williams 20:13
around them. That's true. I like it well. Appreciate coming on the podcast. We'll have everything in the show notes as always. And actually, I haven't even told you this next year we're doing a, I've got a kind of a geographical way. We're doing all of our guests for curious builder. I'm gonna start in the northeast, so I have to have you and Nick on. I've never had you or Nick on the podcast for Monday episodes. Oh, really. Well, I have to do it. I know. I know. Get get your meeting. Appreciate it. I'll stay on. I got to do some stuff for Ian. So cool. Thank you. Appreciate buddy. See, all right. Thanks for tuning. In. The curious builder podcast. If you liked 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.