Q & A Episode 62 - Unlocking Success: Lessons Learned at the Contractor Coalition Summit
Episode #62 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Lessons Learned at the Contractor Coalition Summit
In this Q&A episode of The Curious Builder Podcast, Mark flies solo to share how the Contractor Coalition Summit has seriously leveled up his business game. He chats about everything from getting paid for pre-construction work and using AI, to building a powerful brand and connecting with awesome industry folks. If you're on the fence about going, Mark's stories and practical tips make it sound like this Summit is a total game-changer for builders looking to up their game!
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
I think of the homes that we built to 10 years ago compared to the homes we're building now. Think of the homes we're building now compared to 20 years ago. I mean night and day different in terms of how efficient they are. So we actually are in an industry that pushes the envelope of technology. Ai, is just a different type of technology, and we really need to be using it in our business.
Mark D. Williams 00:29
Welcome to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams. Your host today is Thursday, which is going to be our QA. Actually, it's not a QA, because it's just me. Today, we've been doing our series of losers are winners series, but I'm gonna take a little break for the next two weeks. We've got contractor coalition Summit coming up in 30 days. We're one month out from being in Chicago. Chicago, seventh through the 10th. You've heard her ad reads every single week. If you've been listening to the show, you hear me talk about it all the time, and I really want to talk about I've mentioned before, like from Nashville when I went three and a half years ago. I've gone now five, six times. I'm now part of it. Omaha was my first time being part of leadership. And now, as I come into Chicago with my second one under the belt, not only what does it mean from my point of view, but I wanted to if we can't tell builders of America what we're solving. You know, we talk about all the value proposition of your relationships and the networking is off the charts, and how that actually benefits your business is almost a whole separate episode. There's five things I want to talk about today, about how it specifically helped me run a better business. I've mentioned all the time about how I'm a better business owner and a better business person, a better builder, and just a better human, not for the relationships that I've made, but also all the things that I've learned. And each time I go, even as part of the leadership now, I continue to learn. I think that's the best part of it. If you've been before, we keep seeing alumni coming back again and again and again, because there's so much value. And so if you haven't been before, this is going to be really helpful episode, because I'm going to talk to you in very specific details how it helped my business. Number one is I remember calling Morgan Molitor originally. The original three was Morgan Molitor, Nick Schiffer from NS builders, and Brad Levitt from Phoenix. And it was, you know, the entry fee is $10,000 and I, you know, my wife has said, Hey, I think you'd really benefit from this. And I've told the story many times. I'm like, Wow, $10,000 is a big investment. Now, if it's worth it, I think it's, I think if I can get my money back, my ROI, what is it? Because I'll jump, I'll spend the money. I'm not afraid to spend the money if I know there's a lot of value there, and I called Morgan, and her comment was, you will make back your investment in the first hour. I was just blown away at the confidence, and she was right. And so the story I'm gonna tell you is what that first hour was and why you should come and regardless of what your knowledge gap may or may not be, or what your best practice may or may not be, you're going to gain something. This was just my one of so many things. And so I'd like to kind of go through what that is. So for the first hour of the first contractor coalition in Nashville was all about pre con, our pre construction agreement. Now I've been I've been doing pre construction agreements for quite a while. I think I've been doing them for six, seven years at this point now, close to 10. And I basically, in my pre con, I had survey work, interior designer, architect, you know, basically not saying that I captured it, but just basically kind of itemizing what the client should budget, how much of it was in my scope. And then also, in my particular case, I would usually do a flat fee for my time based on whatever the project was. So let's just for this particular case, it varies. But for me, let's just say it was 8000 or $10,000 so if I'm designing a custom home in this example, you know, I have a number of other fees that are listed out for the contract, but at the bottom, it was always, once you get into a job, you would credit them that amount. And so what client? It was very easy. Of course, you know, every client loved it. I used to sign those things left, right and centers. Of course, they loved them. And Nick Schiffer was the first one to stop me in my tracks and say, so you're surprised that people are excited that you do free work. And I said, What do you mean? He's like, Well, you're doing six months of work, and then you're essentially doing that for free. Now, if they don't go forward, obviously you get to keep that money. That part's non refundable, so in that sense, you're being paid. But if you're going to credit the client, you know, we get paid to build the house, are we being paid to design? Sit as a consultant, follow up with different specialists. You know, all the estimating, all the bidding, and these these homes are really complicated. They take a ton of time. And if you're just going to mail it in, great then don't charge for it. That's fine. If you just want to put a square foot number on it and do a cost estimate, and you feel like you can do that in house for a few hours or a few days, and that's what you want to be for your value add. Go. For it. But Nick really challenged us and said, What is your own self worth? Like, what do you value that time at? And for me specifically, I mean, four to six months of time is not a small commitment. That's a lot of time. If anything, I'm charging like, 20 to 50 bucks an hour for my time, like it is. I spend a lot of time on that front end estimating. I've got people in my team helping, and so that just really offsets that investment and that of time. But more most importantly, I found that the clients that are willing to pay for that, when it's not refundable, value your time. You get a better client. You get a better relationship. You identify the ones that are looking for free work versus the ones that are looking for valuable work, and that alone was by far worth my price of admission. But on top of that, Nick said, all you have to do is changing your contract will be included in your future contract to not will not be included in your contract now, in my contract, my lawyer here locally said I had to write it in bold so that there was no it was not like subtle language. It was like screaming at you, like, this is not included in your contract. And my clients have not had an issue with it in the three years that I've been doing it. I think I've had one person essentially negotiate it back in and that was something that I had to be willing to do. And so I think each client, each company, has to decide on that specific example. I'm just sharing what I took away from contractor coalition, how it helped my business. But let's say you do 10 designs a year, at $10,000 that's $100,000
Mark D. Williams 06:28
of revenue that goes to help offset your bottom line. It's not all profit, to be clear, like you have to pay your people, estimating overhead, all the other stuff, but that's $100,000 on 10 projects. Now, personally, we don't do quite that many. We probably are doing six to seven, but that's $70,000 in this example. That's a lot of money. And by the way, you earned every penny of that money. If you are not doing this, you're doing work for free. And part of the financial literacy and financial IQ that has gone through it, specifically Tyler, Nick and Brad, are the ones that spend several hours on contracts and pre con explain the ins and outs of how to make sure you're being paid for your work is just understanding your own self worth and understanding your business's worth and charging accordingly. And again, this will help you get your the best clients. So it's a win. Win. You make more money. You offset the costs that you actually are incurring while you're getting this phase, but you also get a better client because of it. I mean, it's a trifecta. Number two thing that you'll take away from a contractor coalition is the sworn construction statement. The other thing too is all these documents that everyone has, mine, Brad's, Nick's, Morgan's, they share them all, anyone that's in the collective or, sorry, in the contractor coalition, they'll have a Dropbox that they dump every single slide, every single document. And by the way, these aren't PDFs. These are all usable documents that you can use for your own business. Now you have to make sure that they work for you. Some of the stuff is legal in Boston, but not legal in whatever state you're in, or maybe it's legal in Phoenix. They have to run some of the stuff by your own team, but having all of that as a template to work off of is extremely valuable. Just those assets alone are worth the price. So the knowledge well worth the price on that first issue, the assets that you're getting well worth the investment in your own company. Okay, the sworn construction statements, Nick and Brad usually speak on this for quite a while, and at the at the end of the day, to, you know, summarize it, because this is gonna be a short episode, is you can't. This is a quote my buddy Reese Barnes from Adaptive you can't. Plus, what you don't cost, and if you don't, any single thing that takes to build a house is a cost everything. So your profit at the bottom of your so on construction statement, that is your company's profit, your project management, your insurance, your adaptive subscription, your builder, trend subscription, your insurance, your car, your Matterport, your energy testing, your truck expense, your Biffy, your porta potty, You know, your window cleaning your air duct, cleaning all of that. I mean, we all know that. You know concrete and survey work and all those other things, of course, are above the bottom line. You have to charge your margin on that. But all those other little sort of, let's not call them soft costs, those are still hard costs, like you have to pay that that house cannot be built. I think the easiest thing for me to understand that is, and I use this all the time when I'm explaining it to my clients. It to my clients. Do I need this to build your house? And if I didn't need this service, or, sorry, if I wasn't building your house, would I incur this cost? This is a great one for, let's say, project management. Sometimes clients will come in and say they'll look at your your your GC fee on the project, and I break out my Ian, my site manager, all the things. And they'll say, Well, why isn't that included in your general conditions, in your GC fee? And then I'll respond by saying, well, that's the cost of building your house. That's not cost to run my business. It's a cost to run your house. For instance, if we're not building your house, I'm not paying a project manager to build your house. So that fee is gone. No, it's no different than, you know, you can't drop off a pile of two by fours, and they just assemble themselves like you need the framer. And so that seems more tangible, because we all understand that. We understand that if you dump a load of two by fours on the side of the road, that they're just going to magically, Fantasia style with Mickey's wand, you know, make themselves into a house like framers have to come assemble it. You know, takes a month to do. They often think that, who coordinates all these people who skip? Do you think that just happens randomly? Do you think you get 200 people to show up at different days, at different times with different products, plus get paid and all those other things just randomly? If that was the case, then, yeah, we don't need project managers. That's obviously a ridiculous scenario, so going through and explaining it to yourself first, so that you can look your client in the eye without batting an eye and just say, No, this is the cost to build your house. The other thing that I often use on that specific example is, let's say you're building something out of town or like, way up north. So let's just say in Minnesota, let's call it, let's say I was building something on Lake Superior. So let's call it three, four hours away up by or five hours away by Grand Marais. I would likely, if I built a house up there, I would not have my project manager drive five hours. One way to manage that house, I would find someone local to be boots on the ground that could help facilitate locally. So that project management, they're not a direct employee in this case, because a lot of times people say, Well, if it's your direct employee that should be in the No, that's not true. That is still a cost. You're actually doing it more efficiently by having your own people. So you could actually argue, hey, you're getting a better deal because, you know, this project manager, or this trimmer, or anyone who's in House is doing a better job because they're more familiar with our systems they do our other homes. You're getting a better deal. You just explain to the client, because the client is happy to pay it, as long as you can explain it, justify it, and really the art of the storytelling. So anyway, Brad and Nick are amazing at this topic. Nick in particular, talks about labor burden. You know, if you're a company that does, you know, has your own trim, trim team or carpentry team, you know, really getting into the nitty gritty of your your labor burden. Nick has a great template that helps with that. Brad Levitt and I, we subcontract all that out, and so that's not something we utilize, but it's really helpful. You know, Nick grew up in the trades, strapping on the tool belt and the bags doing trimming work. And so he has a trim shop, a cabinet shop, you know, and all these things, and so he really needs it, and just explaining it, showing his clients, you know what it is.
Mark D. Williams 12:34
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Pella offers innovative window and door solutions that blend beauty and efficiency with showrooms and experts around the country, Pella makes it easy to find the perfect fit for your next project and their team to support it. Build with confidence. Build with Pella. Visit pella.com to explore products and connect with your local rep. Today. For more information, you can listen to episode one or listen to episode 109 where we bring on Pella owners and founders at Pella Northland, as well as their innovative team behind the study set innovation. The other thing that was super helpful that we talked about at the contractor coalition every time is sharing our mistakes, and one of the things Nick talked about is the time that he was sued because he in his contract, didn't define all of the things that were in house, and unfortunately, it was a really bad situation. But the client was, I believe, a lawyer, and knew it ahead of time. They were out for they were out for blood from day one. It was sort of predatory, in my opinion. But anyway, Nick said, you know, that's on me. I'll never make that mistake again. So again, if you, if you do capture any sort of Ian House Project Management, site management, like many of us do, as GCS, if you do any sort of trim work, general labor, framing, anything like that, you need to define what those costs are in your contract. You need to say, hey, my hourly rate for my trimmer is 50 bucks an hour. My labor rate for you know, my framer is 40 bucks an hour, or whatever it is. That way, as you get hourly invoices, you can justify it without doing that, you are leaving yourself exposed. Morgan, every time has been just eye openingly Amazing. At AI, she'll give a two hour presentation about AI, very practical tools, all the systems she uses. It's great because you get a lot of Q and A and we hear so much about the adoption of AI across society in general. And I like what John Walker from buildertrend often says he's the CTO. And he just says that actually, builders are way more technology driven than you would think or give themselves credit for. I mean, you think about pushing the envelope of building practices or building science, wall assemblies, equipment, things like that, like we are boots on the ground. Think of the homes that we built the 10 years ago compared to the homes we're building now. Think of the homes we're building now compared to 20 years ago. I mean night and day different in terms of how efficient they are. So we actually are in an industry that pushes the envelope of technology. AI is just a different type of technology, and we really need to be using it in our business. And Morgan does a great job of explaining how those things get into your business and what you use them for. For me personally, these last two so I've done three points so far, pre con so on construction statement and AI number four is brand I have become an absolute brand ambassador for brand. I could talk about brand all day long. I probably do. I just love what storytelling does. Morgan talks a lot about it. All of them do it. Tyler does it. Nick does it, Brad does it. I do it both with Mark Williams custom homes as well as a curious builder. Is we really spend a lot of time about being ambassadors to our own brand. And so walking through the builders there, and not only showing you how brand is so effective, but also walking you through like, what is it? What is it? How do you do it? How do you utilize it? How do you think about it? It's really remember one time we had Andrew or drew O'Reilly from slash creative. He's actually the creative mind behind modern craftsmen and NS builders and other many other brands, but he spoke one time about being a custodian of your brand, and we'll use Nick schifr as an example. He's such a great custodian. He sees his vision so clearly for his specific brand. And he's got like five companies, but each one he has very siloed in his mind. He knows exactly what he's doing with it, and he's very clear with his intention and with his goal, and really how the brand reinforces each one of them. Because if a potential client can't look at our company and tell us what they do and what our value proposition is, very clearly, very quickly, that's brand. That's storytelling. We've sort of lost an opportunity to to be memorable, to be magnetic. I just saw something recently on Instagram today about a well known real estate agent, and he said, I'd rather be magnetic than be memorable. And his point was, is, if you are marketing and you're trusting somebody's memory, you have to constantly be in their memory. You have to constantly be marketing. But if you're magnetic, if your brand is telling a story, even without you, when it comes time to build like they're coming to find you, because you know they're being drawn into your circle. And that is a really powerful statement Brad talks about all the time around brand, about a silent salesperson. You know people that are not on your payroll, but that are selling your company. You know they're the people you work with. They're the designers or the architects. They're past your past clients. There anyone that interacts with your brand in a positive way. They're brand ambassadors. Sometimes we pay brand ambassadors. I mean that, you know, specifically speaking, Morgan goes through like how to get brand deals. You know, I think that was something that Brad talked about in the interview that I had with him at the last contractor coalition, I asked him what, what was inspiring to him, or what was something that was really fulfilling for him, because he was one of the OGS starting this contractor coalition, just sharing everything. You know. He said, I don't know if he had like, five builders from Phoenix come up where his local market is, and he's like, are they just gonna, am I gonna lose out against all these because they know everything? And the answer is no, it's collaboration over competition. There's so we are so much better together as an industry. You know, rather than this race to the bottom, it's we're lifting each other up to the top, you know, right now, I'm competing on a project with another builder in my collective and it's just fine. I know that the client will win either way, and I'm obviously want the job, but I'll be happy for the other builder if he gets it too, because I know that they're a good person, and I know that they do good work. And wouldn't you rather work in a world like that than one where you're just, you know, it's everyone out for themselves, like honestly, that doesn't interest me even a little bit. And I think that's what is so powerful about the contractor coalition Summit, and really the community as well. And then, really, the last thing is the podcast which you're listening to right now. I would not have this podcast without contractor coalition Summit. I don't think this particular I'll be speaking about it. I mean, everyone there, except for Morgan, has a podcast, right? There's the modern craftsman, which is Nick and Tyler. There's the curious pillar, which, of course, is me. And then there's Brad and Brad Levitt podcast, and each one of us uses it. I think differently, and I think, you know, we have some blogs that we've written about how to set up a podcast, but I think we'll be doing a talk in the spring contractor coalition, where we talk specifically about how to leverage a podcast in your business. I won't go into it in depth right now, but you know, again, just by surrounding yourself with a. People that have different business ventures is super, super helpful. And so in this particular case, you know, a lot of times the people that go to the contractor coalition, you'll see that they show up on, you know, the modern craftsman podcast, the curious builder podcast, the bread Levitt podcast, to share their stories. Because, you know, we're with the we're with you for three days, you know, and that. I mean, this is just the five business things I've taken away. I haven't even touched all the relationships that I have now, having been to the contractor coalition as an attendee first, before I'm even obviously part of the leadership. Now, is Ian. You'll find kind of your people, your click, you know, you'll probably leave. I mean, there's obviously anyone is your people, but there's 30 people in the room. You can't be best friends and know everyone's businesses. You know that intimately, but you'll probably leave with four or five people that you connect with on a regular basis. I still look back at the first one in Nashville. You know Nathan Marsala from the bison group. Shout out to him. In Utah, he and I talk at least once a month. We used to talk weekly and, you know, but that, but we still talk once a month. Check in, how's your family doing? How's your business doing? If we have a question, sometimes we'll use each other to psyche each other up for, you know, a sales meeting or something like that. Michael gutelli from Clark and Aldean, I've seen him a number of times, and he's actually on my morning text train. Every single day I see Michael because, you know, we started this hard 75 thing, and he was a part of it. And he's come, he went to boot camp in Ian. He's coming to boot camp. Boot Camp in Costa Rica. And so you create this community of people that it's hard to believe. I can't even remember what life was like, honestly, without these people in my life. And so if you're, if you're listening to this episode, and you've been aware of the contractor coalition, I just gave you 567,
Mark D. Williams 21:39
super solid things that affected me personally. If it's not now, when, when are you going to invest in yourself? Because that really is what you're doing. I think the people there, they just want the best for everyone. And maybe I should throw in the eighth one, the thing that I didn't even talk about, which is super powerful, and it took me a while to understand how to totally utilize it. But Well, there's a number of brands, so we can't put on the contractor coalition summit without our brand partners top to bottom. Let's say we've got 15 to 20 of them there. They're there in person. These are some of the top brands in the country. You create relationships with them when you do your model homes or you're looking for brand deals yourself to represent these companies, because you probably already work with them. You get to get to know their leadership, their brand team, their marketing team, their sales team. It's a relationship. Everyone there is going there to get better, to be better, and to help the people in their community be better. And so you're not, you know, you're not going there alone. You're everyone is like minded. That's why the collaboration is so through the roof. That's why when we interview the attendees after they attend, they're like, Oh man, I can't wait to come again. I can't tell you how many attendees come back again and again and again, because it's they're your people. So if you haven't been, or if you have been, you already know, you already know all this stuff, and you're just listening for fun and encouraging. And that's great. Thank you for listening. But this, this episode, is really for the people that have never been to the contractor coalition, I'm telling you, come Chicago seven. Sorry, Chicago, November 7 through the 10th. I think we've got 15 tickets left so, and then we're sold out. So now's the time like get there. You'll be worth every single penny. Thanks for tuning in the curious builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners, the best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in.
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