Q & A Episode 73 - Losers Are Winners: When Your Dream Job Ghosts You… and It’s a Gift in Disguise with Trapper Roderick

Dec 31

Episode #73 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | When Your Dream Job Ghosts You

In this Losers Are Winners episode, Mark sits down with Trapper Roderick—a fifth-generation builder with a past life in custom suits (yes, really). They dig into lessons from Trapper’s first business (spoiler: he sold suits to NFL coaches), the power of partnerships, and why giving up control might just be the best business move you make. From equity missteps to $10M deals falling apart, this episode is a masterclass in learning the hard way—and coming out better for it.

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
We're happy to announce that on March 20, sauna camp will be coming back to Minnesota for its second annual event. We're going to have three panelists talking about wellness. We've got a Mount Everest summiter. We've got two Iron Man athletes and the inventor of hostage tape. In addition, we're going to have, of course, two hours of sauna and cold plunge with some Himalayan chocolate. In between, we'll have themed saunas. We'll have story sauna, silent sauna, community sauna for different topics. And then we'll end with an amazing wood fired meal from fumo. All the details are on the curious builder podcast.com
Mark D. Williams 00:41
so complicated at the high end, like the idea that you could do it all anyway, is like, I don't know anyone that can do it all. And then the other part of it is, is like, I just think it's so important for us all to share these stories, because whoever is listening to this episode, like for them to realize that they don't have to do it all themselves. I mark,
Mark D. Williams 01:05
welcome to pierce builder Podcast. I'm Mark Levitt, your host today, I've got Trapper Roderick with Roderick builders, right? Yeah, Roderick builders out in Utah. We got to meet at contractor coalition in Chicago, and now I feel like I'm gonna see you like three times a year. Hopefully more, hopefully more. I like that. We're gonna have your full episode here, maybe end of January, I think when you come on, but as the year wraps up here, I thought it'd be kind of fun to bring you on and do a losers are winners episode, as we like to do. We'll also do another one later with you, another little 20 minute segment, because you like to riff. But let's start with the losers are winners. I always feel like that's a good one for the audience that we have so much to learn by our failures. Give us a quick elevator pitch of how long you've been building, kind of the family business, and just set the stage. And why don't you let us on as far as some of the what are some of the big, big Whoppers you've had in your career so far?
Trapper Roderick 01:58
Man, yeah. It'll be fun. Yeah. So I'm a fifth generation builder. My mom's family is one of the largest commercial builders on the West Coast. They build, like all the LDS temples, more than half of Salt Lake City. So me, aspiring to be like them, you know, is always just a dream. They sold it is an ESOP in the early 2000s my dad was always in construction as well, and so I grew up like framing, doing just like finished carpentry, framing houses, running job sites, sweeping. You know how it was right? You do the same thing. And so I always knew I wanted to be in building. Just never really knew when I was going to get into it and make my own kind of mark on it, right? Because I had these two, like, massive powerhouses on both sides of me, and how was I going to get involved in the aspects that I liked? Right? My dad ended up moving to Los Angeles when I was in my early teens, and he started building just these crazy homes out there. And I was like, Oh, wow, I love architecture, right? So then I studied architecture, and again, when was I going to get into building? And started some other companies, and right around covid, I was like, All right, this is my time, right? So I jumped in and I branded the same as my father just in Utah, and ended up that we ended up working together in the long run. But in short, it was just me and a partner, and very blessed that I have the partnerships I have. I love
Mark D. Williams 03:11
it is that the home in the background there is that the one in LA that you sent me today?
Trapper Roderick 03:14
Well, this is when I sent you the other day. My dad just finished this about six months ago. As far as, like, the most perfect home, like, it's not like the biggest and the most sexy. I mean, it is definitely all those things. But like, just the level of refinement, the way that the stone vein matches for hundreds and hundreds of feet and things like that. I mean, there's just nothing really like that, even in the Los Angeles market,
Mark D. Williams 03:35
about saying something, well, let's go, let's go to your career then has been somewhat shorter. Granted, it could be about personal stuff as well. So five years in, turned on six here in a week, what are some of the bigger loss moments you've had, you know, early in your career, now that you're like, wow, looking back, you're like, that was a tough pill to swallow, but I'm guessing you learned a thing or two from it. Yeah.
Trapper Roderick 03:57
I mean, two major things kind of stick out. And I think the, you know, we all have losses, but it's really how we stand up in and turn them into successes, right? Because they shape us to who we are today, right? So, in a previous business, I was actually a haberdasher, so I'm really, yeah, so hence, like all the fancy jackets and stuff in Chicago, right? And it was just kind of like a weird thing that I got into, but I loved it. I grew it to be a great business, but I didn't reward like the sales guys to be like an equity partner or have like a bigger piece of the pie. Like, I didn't make them a bigger part of the picture. And so that business would probably still be like thriving today, where I ended up just selling it, but I probably could have created it and turned it into, like this awesome engine. And I see that as like a failure, like there wasn't something terrible story from behind it, but that could have just continued to be this awesome powerhouse that it was.
Mark D. Williams 04:49
Give me some give me some context, like, how long did you have it? What kind of revenue were you pulling? And go ahead, yeah, we got
Trapper Roderick 04:56
$3 million a year in revenue. We had four and a half, like four. Locations, and then a bunch of outside sales guys. Oh, wow, this is no joke. Yeah, it was, it was good time. And I got to make suits for, you know, NBA teams, NFL teams, bunch of, like, college football coaches. I always had sideline passes to every game in town, you know. I mean, it was great. I was able to like
Mark D. Williams 05:16
that you're in Utah, and other than the jazz, there is no professional sports.
Trapper Roderick 05:20
You know, the Utes and BYU is basically, which was great because that's what I care about. And so I got to enjoy all that. And so I got to meet the coolest people along the way. And I missed that part of the businesses. I missed the interaction with, just like all these other people doing amazing things in my market, right? And there was a particular there was two sales guys that I wish I would have like given them equity and said, Okay, you keep running with it. And this is what I've succeeded with, and this is what you're great at. But I never really made that leap. People are always like, so controlling of you. Got to keep all your ownership in your company? No, I partnerships are a great thing, and I since I learned that in my previous business, I have a great partner today in my contracting company, and I couldn't succeed without him.
Mark D. Williams 06:10
Honestly, how long did you have the haberdashery? Eight and a half years, and who did you sell it to? And what still around today? Or no, so
Trapper Roderick 06:20
I ended up selling the clients. And yeah, it still exists. There's another local suit shop in town. But I kept the brand because I always intended to turn it into an E commerce company. Had so much data, I just knew that one day I could turn it into something great. And so still have the brand today, just sold all the customers, and they're still well taken care of by a company called hm Cole.
Mark D. Williams 06:39
What was the what was the name of that brand that you had? It's called
Trapper Roderick 06:42
true gentleman supply co so it was a play on just being a gentleman, or what is a real man. And we marketed with people wearing suits, surfing and butcher chopping like bloody meat and just all these things are like, what makes a real man? Or a real man is just a guy who's a gentleman, a guy who takes care of his family, a guy who works hard and does his passions right? And suits were so boring before, and so we just wanted to make them fun. Yeah?
Mark D. Williams 07:07
Add some personality. That's amazing. Okay, yeah, we're definitely gonna have it's funny. I definitely, yeah, it's now it makes way more sense. I saw you rock out some suits when we were in Chicago. I'm like, okay, fly guy, I'm liking that.
Trapper Roderick 07:19
I've got more suits than any one of us could ever need.
Mark D. Williams 07:23
Oh, good. What are you? A 42 long by chance.
Trapper Roderick 07:25
There's some that might fit you that might have to
Mark D. Williams 07:28
come up for a ski trip and come back with a few other jackets, not the skiing kind. Okay. So basically, what you learned through that was you wish you would have, like, kept it, sold it to your people, and then you would add a reoccurring revenue model, or basically, kind of a serial entrepreneur, I am guessing, as we look around, I love looking outside, you know, the building community at other businesses, because, I think, to our own detriment, too many builders, we think of ourselves as builders first, and business owners second. And I think if we something I've tried hard to do on this podcast, including for myself, is just like because I think you sort of manifest itself. But like, if you consider yourself an entrepreneur, you consider yourself a business owner or marketer that just happens to build, I think we're better off as a business because, you know, I've said this many times, I believe it to be true, which is why I keep saying it, which is, you know, you can be a good builder and bad at business, and you won't make it. You can be a good business owner and a bad builder, and you can make it, and hopefully you're good at both. I guess, what would be your what would be your comments on that statement? It pulls out
Trapper Roderick 08:32
a lot of heartstrings. I would have never met with you if I didn't tell a story that relates to that. I told a story to Morgan, and that story was about my father. My father is one of the best builders you'll ever meet, and anyone who's ever had the pleasure of working with him realizes they got a bargain and have one of the most beautiful homes detailed throughout any architecture that worked with them, spectacular. But my dad never treated his version of Rotterdam builders initially, like a business, and he does today, but I look at he built $950 million in residential real estate in under 40 homes, and still just barely made a decent living. Like that's it's really sad, and it's fine now, because it shaped me, and it's helped me to be able to be able to shape him. I handle more of the business side, and he handles parts of construction I could never even understand, right? I mean elevating a house 90 feet off the ground and drilling piles into the ground. So it's helped, and it's a beautiful story in the end, but it really tore at me for a long time, and I think that's maybe why I waited so long to enter the contracting space because of that exact thing. I wanted to learn business attributes. I wanted to learn marketing, I want to learn finance, I wanted to learn all these things because I knew I was going to be a great contractor. I was in my blood. And it's is in my blood, like there's not a single thing on the jobs that I can't do. It's just whether I should be doing it, you know? So, yeah, that really pulls up my heart strings. That exact subject, and I could give speeches for months on end over that,
Mark D. Williams 10:05
out of curiosity. What's your family structure? How many siblings do
Trapper Roderick 10:09
you have between my parents? Just me, right? So they're they were divorced, and I was, like, two. My dad's only 17 years older than me, so like, you were, like, right in between me and him. Oh, wow,
Mark D. Williams 10:20
that is okay. The reason I was framing that question, and obviously your experience, given that, is going to be a lot different. But I had heard something recently that has struck me, and I talk a lot. I mean, you were there at contractor coalition when I gave I mean, I think it was pretty heartfelt. I got a little choked up talking about my daughter. I was talking about boundaries create freedom, and I won't talk about it on this particular episode in depth, but just to mention that you were there something that was said to me, or that I've heard on another podcast, just about business owners, not specific to building, but it's applicable. And they were commenting on how the second and third generation company companies how hard it is to have the children want to take over the company, and I think the founders and the owners really struggle with that, because they've poured their heart and their life and their soul into these businesses that for many of them, it is their identity. I actually think that's a major problem, but that's again, another topic for another podcast. But and then their kids. Anyway, this, whoever was commenting on it, said, is it any surprise that put yourself in your kids shoes. They see you working nights and weekends. They see you not available for them. They see they hear about all the difficult clients. They don't hear about all the great clients, because you often talk more about the ones that because you're cathartic with your family about the things that are going wrong. And so is it any wonder that the second and third generation, they don't want anything to do with the business, and part of this was under the framing of the conversation of, like, a lot of venture capitalists are buying up, you know, mom and pop shops for recurring revenue models like plumbers and HVAC and electricians and all those wonderful things. Because, you know, there's, I mean, like Paul Jensen, the CEO of Nvidia, said it that the next generation of millionaires is going to be plumbers and electricians and HVAC, because there's going to be nobody to do the work, but yet, the kids of those families want nothing to do with it. What? What do you when you hear that? Do you you, can you look around your community, or does any of that sort of relate even a little bit to your story?
Trapper Roderick 12:14
Oh, totally does. I mean, I even think just literally within my family, my father in law just sold an 85 year old company because none of his kids were even really in a position to take over. And I'm not in a position to take over either. I'm running my own right, and it's an 85 year old trucking company out of St George, Utah, and they have over 120 trucks. I mean, it's just it's so sad. And same with like I was said to a subcontractor and a client on the same day last week, they both were, like, we were telling some stories about why we always have to be vetting out new subcontractors. Like, the reality is like we shouldn't, when we find someone that we love, we should just be working with them and continue to work with them. Yes, I agree with that, and when we do, we do do that, but doesn't mean that that company is going to be around for forever because, because that's the reality is, there are people not wanting to take on. So we're having to vet out the next generation, and then the younger guys still and give them little bits of work. Because a guy who has an art and a craft to his work, he's still not running a business, and it's likely not going to be around in five or six years. I Ian,
Mark D. Williams 13:26
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Trapper Roderick 17:25
other way. No, I think that's a blessing too. Because I think that's why so many contractors, like we're talking about the contractors that didn't run businesses, I think that's why they fail, is because they never mastered. They were such, so good at their trade. They were a tradesman that happened to build houses, and then they never even evolved into being the business owner and and again, it's just, it's sad, and so I wish more people were educated, or at least brought to light of how much better your business can be run. If you step back, like, Yes, I can do a lot of it, but I know I'm not the right guy to do all of it, like, I don't have the art or the touch that some of these guys do for situations like what you just explained well.
Mark D. Williams 18:07
And I think in some ways, our day and age is actually easier to give up the reins because the homes have gotten so complicated at the high end. Like the idea that you could do it all anyway is, like, I don't know anyone that can do it all. And then the other part of it is, is like with the proliferation of social media and podcasts like this, where everyone shares their story, I think these messages the reason I have the podcast, the reason I get so much fulfillment of talking to another builder in Utah, at least I've met you in person. I mean, a lot of people I don't ever get to meet in person, and so I just think it's so important for us all to share these stories, because whoever is listening to this episode, like, for them to realize that they don't have to do it all themselves. And like, what a like, it's like the sun coming out of the clouds, like, oh wow, life is so much brighter and better when we can do it together. And I just feel like, you know, as long as I'm in this game, like, I'm going to be banging that drama of collaboration over competition, because not only is it better, not only is it more enjoyable, but you will go so much farther than you ever could have possibly imagined by doing it. It's it's a it's a force multiplier beyond your wildest dreams. Yeah, I agree. What have you got going on here in the next couple of weeks that you're prepping for the next year?
Trapper Roderick 19:19
Oh, man. Well, we just had, like, a really big deal fall apart last week. It all came together at the beginning and fell apart at the end of the week, not scrambling, but trying to figure out how we're going to fill that void. Because it was a $10 million back home that we were putting together to break ground in March and and someone ended up, basically the law owner, ended up getting a smoking offer on the lot that they couldn't really pass up, so I didn't blame them. So trying to kind of fill that void for this, that big project, our big push is really finances, right? We were good at our accounting, but we're kind of reorganizing a lot of how we do it using some softwares like adaptive and whatnot. So that's really my big push over the next. Few weeks, as well as some of these things, like with you rebranding. It's not that Roderick is not luxury, but I think a lot of people go to our website, at least in our market, and they are scared of us. Oh, they're too expensive. No, we're not too good for your two and $3 million house. We're definitely not too good for it. We're not too good for anything. Just because we've done these 80 and 100 million dollar homes, we're not too good for it. So really, how do we refine that branding and image to reflect that we are just good local builders who care and are involved on your job?
Mark D. Williams 20:31
That's a, yeah, that's very interesting. I remember, yeah, I've done a number. We talked a little bit about it at CCS, but not that much. And I just, I think I've done three or four brands, mostly refreshes, but it's always sort of been my wife, who now you're in a haberdashery business, so you are exempt from this stereotype of men. But most men wear their clothes far too long, and they're so comfortable. Like, this jacket was great, I mean, and then they look at it like, how long have you had that jacket? Like, 25 years? Like, holy smokes, like you're like someone still wears their shirt from high school or college or whatever. The point being is, sometimes we need someone else to to give us some reflection and be like, You know what? It's not that it's doesn't do its job. It certainly does, but like, it no longer represents who you are today. And my wife used to say that about the homes that I built every time that I did a brand refresh. She basically because we were sort of leveling up, and she and yours is interesting because it's almost like a reverse, yeah. And so for us, it was like, you know, the homes that you build far out strip, the homes that you have on your website, and the way that your brand is sort of felt and represented, both in imagery and, like, just the user experience and all those types of things. And so I've, been getting kind of just an absolute brand fan over the last four or five years, but yours is a unique one, because you've already sort of achieved this high level of execution, but you want to now be approachable and be like, yeah, if you don't have 100 million, that's okay. If you're not Bill Gates, there's only, like one Bill Gates, so you could be Mark Williams or Brandon Smith or whoever, and we will build your house. So I think that's, I can't wait to see the messaging that you develop around that, because it'll be powerful. It's going to be interesting.
Trapper Roderick 22:04
I can definitely use some help. So if you got some pointers, I'll take it. Because, yeah, we'll do one of these every five years, but then we have 10 or 20 of the four and $5 million homes. But how do you not scare more of those off? Because those are the bread and butter.
Mark D. Williams 22:17
I mean, there's, we can talk about this offline too, but like, there's a builder, that incredible builder, and I did not realize that they didn't, had never even really built new homes before. And I was like, all their website is incredible. Another whole goal was to level up and to build these really enormous homes. But their website, they always did little vignettes. And I think architects have done a lot better job at this than builders. Like, at least for me, anyway, you had a longer pedigree. But for me, like, when I first built my homes, I would take pictures of everything and just show everyone these empty homes. Like, no staging, no this way, before I had designers and architects and like, just builders, you know, just how many photos could I put out there? Like, oh, this blank, huge, 20 by 20, great room of just wood floor. Like, now in hindsight, I'm like, oh, because so cringe. But I guess my point is, like, architects have always done a better job of, like, only showing you, like, one or two photos and then writing a long narrative, and like, letting you as the consumer reach out to them and say, I'd like to know more. So I suspect that part of your your branding trying to appeal to anyone will be like, you know, sure you still want to attract and let it be known that you can do the big homes, but also like, it's really the details and it's the care. And you're such an amazing human being that I think as long as you can get in front of them in person, that's all you really need, is a chance to be in front of them. Because Maya Angelou, I quote her, all the time, they forget what you say, but they never forget how they make you feel. And you do have that, it factor in terms of like you make people feel very relaxed, you're very approachable person. So I think your brand will be that as well. Well. Thank you, Mark. I really appreciate that you're welcome on that note. We'll let everyone enjoy their Thursday. And thanks for tuning in to the curious builder podcast. Thanks for tuning in to curious builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor, share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in.