Episode 67 - How a $2.4 Billion Lawsuit Led to a Builder’s Comeback: Chicago Summit Stories You Need to Hear
Episode #67 | Chicago Contractor Coalition Summit Recap
In this episode, Mark gives us a fun and honest recap of his time at the Contractor Coalition Summit in Chicago, from emotional breakthroughs to behind-the-scenes laughs and epic house tours. He talks about the power of opening up, the need for boundaries to create freedom, and how hanging out with other builders can totally change your business game. Plus, there are some great stories (including a wild one about a $2.4 billion lawsuit!), and plenty of good vibes for anyone in the building community.
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 have been following the podcast, you know, we're very interested in the wellness space and promoting wellness among our entrepreneurs and our community. Sonic camp is coming up in Minneapolis on March 20, from two to 8pm tickets are now available online, and the whole concept will all be about prioritizing your mental health and your body as business owners, after two hours of Sonic we have fumo, which is amazing, Mediterranean style dishes by wood fire grill, head to curious builder.com under retreats, under sauna camp that is going to be March 20, the
Mark D. Williams 00:37
opening night. We just said, let's talk about off the record, not recorded. What is the hardest thing that you have experienced in your career? There's something really cathartic and really magical when people share a difficult experience, because it really opens people up and they were really deep and really meaningful. Ian,
Mark D. Williams 01:00
Mark, welcome to peer spirit Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today is our Thursday Q and A session, or our mini session. And as you've been following our social media, you'll know that I was in Chicago for a contractor coalition summit over the last four or five days. Amazing, amazing, amazing event. So today is going to be kind of a recap for those alumni. I think we're at 350 close to 400 alumni now in our history, which is just amazing. And this was one of, I mean, I say this probably every time it was one of my favorite. This one really was probably the most emotional one that we've ever had. Just the boundaries that were brought down, the walls that were brought down, really, from the very beginning, people were so open and just so authentic. And you know, it's one of the things that I like the most about the podcast, is when I get to interview people, when they're just real and they're authentic, regardless of where they find themselves. Those are the episodes that I find most interesting, most appealing, and the ones that you connect and learn the most on so I'll just kind of give for those that don't know what the contractor coalition Summit is. It's basically a four day event that we do every six months. You've got Brad Levitt from Arizona, got Nick Schiffer from Boston, with NS builders. Got Morgan Molitor here from Minnesota, with construction to style. You have Tyler grace from tgr home concepts. He and Nick are also co hosts of the modern craftsman and then myself. So Thursday flew in late that night, caught up with the guys that night for a late bite. Katie Cath was actually in town, which was pretty cool. She's from Minnesota, Paso alumni, good friend of ours from Minnesota. She was there with Morgan, as well as well as to catch up with Allison case Anderson from Integra builder. She's based in Chicago, also a former alumni. I met her for the first time in Nashville, actually, which was my first contractor coalition. So Friday morning, up early, the whole aft gang and a few others went to lifetime so it was great to spend some time with them in the gym and just harass Brad. I don't get to see him that often. And then we had a two hour meeting. So this was actually one of the highlights, because, you know, the five of us run our own companies. I have the curious builder, Mark Williams, custom homes, you know, boot camp, Sonic camp, all these other things. And the contractor coalition is such a huge part of what draws us all together. It's how we all met. It's how we stay really connected. And I think what's happening in the industry is we're just seeing so, so much of a need for, not only financial literacy and business leadership entrepreneurship, but just really a place to bond where you can get really deep, really fast. And the contractor coalition is really the perfect place for that, mainly because you get to that 30 to 40 people there. I think this is one of the biggest ones we've had. I think we had 35 builders in attendance and one designer, and it was really, really, really a magical time. So we spent two hours that morning for breakfast just talking about what we want to do with contractor coalition Summit. And we probably have 15 to 20 ideas. One of the things that we need to do a better job of is really engaging with our alumni. So we've got all kinds of ideas and plans. You know, how to stay in monthly contact with the alumni, how to provide more resources for the alumni, how to create groups where they can, you know, see coaching and mentorship, not only from us, but even from each other, creating like subgroups, and it'll really be accessed only by alumni. We also want to try to do maybe a standalone event. Tyler Grace has been very passionate about this. And one of the things that I think makes the contractor coalition summit so special and so unique is its size. It's smaller, you know, 30 to 40 people, you really, over four days, get to know each other very, very well. And I think that is magical. I don't think we want to change that. However, there is a significant investment in yourself to come and it's for sure, it's worth it. I mean, we did an entire episode that'll be released on the contractor coalition podcast, where actually Brad Robinson, I went back and forth. I think we named like 50. 18 or 16 things that, to us, is worth $10,000 that you learn or have access to by coming and so be interesting to see what the audience thinks of that. But, you know, there are we want to do a scholarship for one thing. So we'll have people submit a bio, and we'll, I think we're going to look at two to four companies where we would sponsor somebody, where the investment is just bigger than that, then they can make and so we're going to consider a scholarship. We are also going to be looking at a a one day event. Most likely it'll be in Minneapolis, and it would be a much lower rate. Don't know the details on that just yet, or the dates, or any of those things, but it's likely going to happen. And really it'll be a one day event. It'll obviously cannot even come close to the full experience of a four day event, but you'll still get a lot of details in that one event, one event. And then really the hope is, is that people you know would come to that one event realize just how much more there is and how many more levels there are to go. And then in the future, they would obviously come to a future contractor coalition summit where, you know, it's the full four days, so anyway, lots more to share, but, or actually that I can't share. So we'll, we'll be, if you stay tuned to our social channels as well as our Instagram and mailing list, you'll obviously be able to kind of get a first look at that. Then, really, we did House tours. So this has been kind of a hallmark now for the last four or five coalitions, where the host city will find some local builders that are either a part or pass alumni. So in this case, Allison case Anderson from INTEGRO, an incredible builder. We toured one of her homes and she did a landmark restoration, where that's really what she specializes in. And so she just talked about all the details and going through the city and all these restoration rules, and really the complexity was actually built. It was in kind of this really cool street, this historic Street. It was built over a pawn shop, Pawn Shop, and the pawn shop wanted to stay in business. It was one of their flag marks for the whole country. So it's a pretty big I think it was like Pawn Shop America or something like that. And so that she talked to how difficult it was to create like this, the basically this tunnel around their entrance. While they're building this, they're redoing the whole facade of this brick building. It was pretty wild. So we got to see that home. And then we too, we went to Willis towers, which, if you haven't looked at it, Google, Willis towers, I think it was 1970 it was the tallest building in the world for like, 40 years. Like 40 years. If you think of like cigarettes coming out of a cigarette box, kind of like those little circles and kind of like in different random orders. That's what the architects sort of did to structurally align these different columns. So when you when you see the tower, it'll totally look like a pack of cigarettes. It's actually pretty cool. But incredible. Architecture had been remodeled several times, and one of the lead architects, I think it was like a $1.7 billion architecture company. It was kind enough to give us a tour along with, I think it was Graco. Was the name of the GC on it. They do like 9 billion a year in commercial buildings. And so you're just talking about huge projects so far out my understanding, other than obviously a fan of architecture and a fan of construction, but it was just wild to see what they did with the remodel in the thought and the intention and, of course, the scale. The scale is wild. It was 4.6 million square feet, which is absolutely just hard to wrap your head around. And the other thing was, it had like an 86% vacancy rate, or occupied rate, which is one of the highest around. I think the city's average was like 72 which is actually pretty good too. But so it's very well received. It's a historic building. We got to tour it, go up the elevators. Do I mean, see all the construction, see just kind of everything. It was really, really cool. One of the things that I love about the contractor coalition is is I think people have really responded to these home tours when they're in Minnesota. For instance, they got tour one of my homes. When we're in Arizona and Phoenix, we got to tour one of afts homes Boston, we got to tour white oak. And so anyway, as we move around, the next one will be in Denver. So we'll have a couple homes in Denver, then the one after that will be in Charlotte. So it's always just kind of fun to see architecture and building. It's been one of the draws for just kind of a non regulated fun thing to kind of get everyone excited. Then we have the kickoff event. So the kickoff event was kind of like a six to nine food Happy Hour and kind of a cool little place in the hotel. But what made this one really special is, in the past, we've had Mark law liberty, who's an amazing he owns construction instruction out of Colorado. Brad Levitt built his personal house. It's a net zero house down in Arizona. And he's an incredible speaker. I think he speaks like 150 times a year. He's just and it's like a entertainment, education and theater all in one. He's amazing person to listen to, but he had a conflict, so he's coming in the next day. So we thought, well, let's do something different. And so we had this idea that one of the things that our attendees have always said is just how much they enjoy, kind of the deep conversations in between, you know, the sessions and. So what we did is we accelerated that Mike, we were, came up with this great word that I or I should, I'm sure he came up with it, but I love it, which is compressed time, so you're only there for four days. So how can we compress it and make the most out of it? So the opening night was at towards the end of it, the last hour, we just said, and we Nick and I went first, and just to kind of let people know that, you know, we'd be willing to be vulnerable as well. And a lot, no, they're all strangers. No one knows each other, really. And we just said, let's talk about, you know, off the record, not recorded, what is the hardest thing that you have experienced in your career? There's something really cathartic and really magical when people share a difficult experience, because it really opens people up. And there was closed deals. So I won't share all the things that were shared, but they were really deep and really meaningful. Some of them went into mental health. One gentleman talked about getting down to, you know, basically his last, you know, few pennies. That not pennies, but last few 1000 he had in his business a couple years ago and invested it in himself, came to contractor coalition, and turned his career and his life around. And now he said, I came back because I'm doing better than I've ever done, which was you can only imagine how that make you feel if you're hosting and you hear that story like the fact that you were a part of someone's life changing event, pretty magical, so that that really set the tone for the whole weekend. Saturday morning, I usually will do like a half, you know, like Nick and and Brad are big going to the gym rats. And so I usually lead an outside run group. So we had five or six people go for a run. It was great. We ran down by Lake Michigan, ran along the water, which was really great. And then the food, I think the food is maybe one. We always have amazing food, but the breakfast in particular was very good. They had this cool, Open Atrium that kipton Gray Hotel. So if you're in Chicago, check it out. It's definitely worth it. Food is amazing. And then really it's from eight to 12 pretty straight. It's like drinking through a fire hose while Brad Morgan, Nick and Tyler are all doing their teaching. I'm usually outside the room interviewing people. So I did about six and a half hours straight of interviews. Those interviews would be aired on the contractor, coalition summit podcast, as well as the YouTube and the website as well those kind of, we kind of just have a weekly cadence that we air those on when you do a better job of talking about them. And it was great. You know, what are people learning? Why did they come? We interviewed the sponsors, like, why do they continue to partner with us? So it's really all the behind the scenes directly from the people that are coming. So I always feel like that's, you can take it from me, which I'm gonna give it to you real, but hearing it from their point of view is always really neat as well.
Mark D. Williams 12:42
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Mark D. Williams 13:39
And then I was able to do my first presentation to contractor Coalition, which I was really excited about, something I'm extremely passionate about. It really encapsulates a lot of my own personality, who I am. And the talk that I gave was boundaries create freedom. If you've been listening to the podcast, you know you heard this a lot. It's my favorite quote of the last two years, and really it's all about the boundaries that we set in our life, with our clients, with ourselves, to protect the things that we want. That's what gives us freedom. And so I had about a half hour presentation about, you know, different things that will allow you to buy back your time, that will allow you to get freedom, to spend time with your family, to have the time you need to recharge so that you can show up and be your best self, for your clients, for your business, for your spouse, for your family. And I fail all the time. I was very clear to you know, talk about how often I fail at it, but how powerful that message is. And was really humbling for me, because I had a bunch of pictures of my kids up there, and we were talking about different things that I've done, and, you know, the misogyny, again, talked about that on the podcast before just picking this one thing that your year revolves around, can be business, personal, whatever you want, but the number of people, I mean, I probably had 1012, people the next two days that came up to me. One gentleman had tears in his eyes, and he said, you know, your message really resonated with me. Me, and I need to do a better job of, you know, creating boundaries so I can have, you know, that freedom. Thank you for that. And obviously, again, this is why I think this one was so emotional. It really, it just felt like the connection was so deep. And it's, I can tell you if you've ever listened to someone, or if you've ever spoken in front of a crowd, and I do, I love it. I mean, it's, it's not hard for me to get in front of a crowd. I love, I love I love presenting. I love entertaining. I love, you know, just sharing things that have meant a lot to me, but having people come up to you and say that connected with them is a it's a pretty special feeling. And so I guess I would encourage people that, if you hear people, not just this podcast, but any if you hear a podcast, if you if you're at a speech, if you're at a seminar, if you're if you listen to anybody and it touched you, go up and talk to them, it'll mean a lot to them. Whoever that person is, send them a note. Send them a message. It matters. It helps them keep doing what they're doing. And so I'm just sharing my experience so that you know it matters. And then that night, we had a after another four or five hours of presentations, he had a two hour break where people could do whatever they want. They could relax. We met up for kind of a light dinner. There's so many people that we connect with, or that I get to connect with, and so it's like there's just never enough time. Then we had a nice, beautiful dinner, walked home, and away we go. I was kind of funny because it was raining and Doug Duvall, he the producer for many podcasts, modern craftsman. He used to produce mine, Brad Levitt, the level heads, a number of others. And he, he helps us produce all the content. You know, behind the mics for contractor coalition. He's awesome, but he's like, Hey, let's do kind of a man on the street video. So I interviewed Rhys Barnes. He's a big fan of the show. He's got a huge beard. He's got builders budgets and beer his podcast. Shout out to him, but he's just this. He's like, this larger than life character, and he's with adaptive, who's been one of our longtime partners here for the curious builder. And anyway, he's got like, the microphone, like, clipped to his beard. And when I say beard, he's got like a ZZ Top beard, except younger looking, and we're walking down the street and it is pouring rain, and we're just getting hammered in the face with like this sleet rain. So I have no idea what that interview is going to sound like or look like, but it probably be pretty funny. In fact, at one point we were Doug was walking backwards, filming us. And he's like, you stop if you think I'm gonna fall on anything. And we just kept walking. We walked like, right across the street while traffic was going. He stopped. He's like, Guys, I'm like, well, we would have kept walking. He's like, I would prefer to wait a minute and not get hit. Thank you. So anyway, great evening. Next morning, we did a run in the rain. We lost a few people in the rain. We actually went the wrong way. We got turned around. It was so cloudy, we didn't really check map question at 530 you know, we weren't really our best and so we ran. There was a couple new people on the group from the day before, and we wanted to show them the lake, but we actually ran the exact opposite way from the lake. So we moved back to the hotel. Lost everyone. I thought they were gonna go with me, but I ran down the lake alone. Didn't matter. Was just great to get out and run again after I've been dealing with some foot injury stuff. So it was just fun to be outside. And then we had another full day of sessions, you know, pre con agreements. We're talking about client management, client expectations going through, you know, I think they have an hour and a half contract presentation, all the ins and outs of different types of contracts, but also, specifically, like real life examples of where things have gone right, where things have gone wrong. Morgan does a whole one about social media that usually just has so much information that people come out and their brain is just melted. And so it was, it's powerful. And then in the afternoon, right after lunch, Nick and I got to give a whole brand presentation. It was about an hour long, a little over, I think, hour and five of I got to speak about Misa, who's which is our spec home. Misa means cozy and Swedish. The whole entire brand is all around wellness. And so I spoke at depth about, like, why I created the brand, like the power of having a brand when you build a home, and how you can market it differently. And you can go to Misa, who.com's that's m y s, a u h. Wait, m y s, a h, u s.com, if you want to check it out. And then Nick talked about 45 white oak, which is very well known, almost famous, really, at this point, random people come up to me like, Hey, do you know this thing about 45 white oak? And so Nick talked about all in depth about, you know, his pursuit of excellence. And I love, I think the best way to really encapsulate Nick's passion for 45 white oak, which I talked about last week on our Thursday if you missed it, go back a week, and you can check out my 25 moments of delight at 45 white oak. But Bugatti is a real high on car, and rather than having a budget, and then you build a car, Bugatti builds the car, and then they tell you what it's going to cost. And that's really the angle that Nick is tackling with 45 Ian, he and I have a little bit different philosophy and our brands and how we are bringing these spec homes to market, but there's way more in line and way more similar things than there are different and so it was really fun to be on stage with Nick and kind of go back and forth and just you could see the audience really soaking in our passion. And, you know, Nick and I, it was like, talking about your kids, you know, we're so excited about our perspective, you know, spec homes, that it was almost like, when is the other guy gonna stop talking so I can talk about my home? And then I'm sure Nick felt the other way. So that was really cool. And then we had dinner that night at monogram, which was really cool. So they're in merch Mart, and they had a chef, and we had a kind of a really cool hour. In fact, I think I heard the most interesting story I've ever heard in my life. I'm trying to bring him on the podcast. We'll see if he agrees. I'll just give this little teaser. He's from the East Coast, and he was indicted for a $2.4 billion lawsuit, third in the history of the United States. Saddam Hussein was number one, I think, was like, I forget the number two, like Gaddafi, or some other international, you know, dictator, terrorist. And then this guy, spoiler alert, I'm not gonna say his name, because I want to wait till the episode comes out. Spoiler alert, he was acquitted of all charges, and he became a builder during the process. I think the whole episode that we'll have with him on is all about mental resilience, mental toughness, doing hard things, mental health. But I mean, I mean, I'm a passionate person. I love storytelling. I was so engrossed with this story, it took him two and a half hours. We were interrupted several times with between dinner presentations, you know, the bus. But, I mean, I can't remember the last time I sat that riveted. I just could not stop listening to the story. So regardless of who you are or why you listen to this show, I'm telling you the this this story will grab you and bring you in its magnetic so I really hope to have that before Christmas, if I can, and then Monday morning. So it was really cool. So it started to snow. We had a winter weather advisory, kind of a little mini Blizzard for Minnesotans. It wasn't that big of a deal. Was like two inches. Everyone was like, freaking out. I'm like, this is just a random day that ends in, why? But okay, and but they were canceling flights, rescheduling flights. I've got three kids at home. I'm like, Oh man, my wife isn't that excited about me being on four or five days anyway, if I miss another day, like, oh man. So I called my dad, he's 75 and he says, Man, I'll just drive there from Minneapolis. So my flight had got rescheduled from one o'clock to nine o'clock, but I didn't know if it's gonna get canceled again. And so anyway, he drove down very kind of six and a half hours from Minneapolis to Chicago, crashed in my hotel room. So that morning, it was really fun. I got to bring my dad to cut the last day of contractor coalition, and he was a hit. I think they liked him more than me, which is just fine by me. He's pretty awesome. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later, just having him in the office. So it was raining or snowing, pretty good, actually, at this point. So last day, I went with Brad to the gym, two of us, a couple of late arrivals, and had a great time. Came back, had breakfast, and then it was fun. So, you know, I got to have breakfast with my dad. He got to meet these other builders. He got to meet that cool guy from Connecticut that I was alluding to, along with Greg Lasker. So Greg and I met. I call him OG because he's from. Where's Greg from? Down the southeast. I'm blinking right now, not Nashville, Tennessee. I met him at Nashville. Anyway, he is just this warm. I mean, he's like, warm butter on warm toast. He's just this really inviting, warm personality. And him and my dad hit it off right away. And so anyway, we had a good time. That morning, Morgan gave a talk on AI, and it was every time she gives her talk on AI, usually Nick is there too. Nick had to leave early to get back, so he wasn't there. But the two of them are so far ahead of everyone else on AI, it's super impressive and inspiring. And well, I think what we're going to do, one of the tactical changes that we'll make is when we go to Denver in April, which is our next contractor coalition Summit, we're going to put AI on day one, lesson one, because a lot of the things that Morgan was teaching us and has taught us in the past, or ones that have been listening, is even how we take notes and listen. But it goes way beyond that. And so we thought it'd be really fun to put AI higher up in the in the teaching segment, versus the end, mainly so that people that are interested could download whatever program and use what she's telling them through the whole conference. So almost like you get to do it and practice it all in that one weekend. So I'm really excited for that. And then we did a an hour and a half, I think it ended up being like an hour and 10 minute Q A. So in the past, we just had people raise their hands and just ask any question they want, which is just fine. But this year, we had a QR code at the end of every session, and people could write in their questions, you know, over the three days. So for this last one, they were all just tabulated on an app that came to. Our phone, and we would just read the questions, have a discussion between the four of us, and people often find the Q and A the most helpful. I know when I went to my first contractor coalition summit in Nashville that the Q and A is really, I mean, that's why I went. I personally have not done great of just, you know, listening while someone just talks the whole time. I I like to interact, and so I know other people do too. And so then it wrapped it up. We had to say goodbye. Met some amazing people over the four, four days that we were there. And then dad and I got to drive home. So it was really special. We got to spend six hours in the car just talking life and just talking about everything. And so, you know, I'm 45 dad's 75 so it's, there's not, I don't know how many of those trips we're going to have quite like that. And we've done a lot of road trips in our life. And I was commenting to dad, just, you know, all the stories we got to talk about and kids and everything. And so it just, it was really just a special four or five days. So that's, you know, that's really it. Oh, one thing I wanted to read. I just got this text about an hour ago. I'm not gonna say his name, but I'll I this is what. This is why being a part of contractor coalition is so meaningful to the five of us that help lead it. Mark, my head is still spinning from this past weekend, from all the information that's going to completely transform my business, but also the personal connection that we have. I use chat GBT intentionally for the business today to write a very hard email in response to a clear boundary that was trying to be crossed and set expectations for our SOPs. That email would have taken me two or three or four days to write, and would have emotionally wrecked me for those days it took me 12 minutes. I feel professional and not emotional, maybe one of the most productive Mondays I've had in my life. Thanks again, to you and everyone else for all your openness and transparency. I mean, that's powerful. We're super, super cool. We do get texts and emails from the attendees. Obviously, the ones in person, there's more than I can remember, but it's the way they make you feel, and it's a wonderful thing. So if you're interested, our next one is in April now that registration and date release will be announced here shortly. And if you're an alumni, I just want to say thank you. You're one of us. You, we see you, we appreciate you, and we're happy to collaborate, and not, you know, just to be together, it's, it's an amazing thing. So thank you for tuning in, and we'll see you next week. Thanks for
Mark D. Williams 27:24
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