Q & A Episode 74 - The Curious Builder’s Secret Network: Why Your Friends Determine Your Future

Jan 7

Episode #74 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Why Your Friends Determine Your Future

On this episode of The Curious Builder, Mark Williams dives into why coaching, leadership, and having the right people around you matter so much, sprinkling in some classic wisdom from Warren Buffett. He talks about real-life lessons learned through business ups and downs, the importance of friendships, and shares a few favorite books and upcoming events for builders and entrepreneurs. If you’re into personal growth, business tips, or just love hearing how great connections can shape your life, this one’s got a little bit of everything!

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, we are running sauna camp back for its second annual event that's going to be out in Lake independence. It's going to be a half day event. We're going to start with a one hour podcast with three endurance athletes, someone who's climbed Mount Everest and the creator of hostage tape. We're then going to have two hours of sauna and cold plunging in between. We're also going to have Himalayan chocolate from Legacy chocolates, a good friend of mine, and a chocolate tour from St Paul. And then we are going to end with fumo, which is I like their tagline, in Smoke we trust. So if you're interested in community, if you're interested in learning some new experiences and really diving deep on your wellness. We hope you'll join us on March 20. All the details are on the curious builder podcast.com there are people now that I spend a significant amount of time with that five years ago, I didn't even know who they were. Brad Levitt down in Arizona. Nick Schifrin, Boston, Morgan Molitor, Tyler, grace and the close friends I've made through the curious builder you spend a lot of time in people's orbits, and before you know it, like your friends, you're doing stuff together, and it makes sense to me now, in a way that I didn't understand before. Welcome
Mark D. Williams 01:18
to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host, Happy New Year and welcome to our Thursday midweek. We don't have a guest this week for our Thursday. Our winners are losers series, or wait, our losers are winners series, which has been a great one. I was having a conversation with Mike Weaver this morning, actually, on the way in, and we were just talking about the benefits of coaching. And as Mike Weaver, if you don't know who he is, he is the Vice President of Sales for Emser tile, one of our biggest sponsors for our curious collectives, and likely going to be one of our sponsors for the curious builder podcast here in 26 as well. But where I was going with this is he is a phenomenal salesperson, and you just meet him one time, and you know this guy, he just, he was born a salesperson, but on top of it, he's an amazing he'd be an amazing person to work for. And I told him that, and we got talking about the importance of coaching and the importance of really helping people achieve the best version of themselves. And I don't think that coaching is in terms of business has been for my own team. I don't give it enough thought. I try to lead by example. I try to invite people in on my own personal team so that they can see my work ethic, what I value, what is important to me. And so it's not that I don't lead, but I don't think of myself as someone who like, sits down with my different teammates, and it kind of walks them through, like, how to get to where they want to go. I've always probably hired people that are self starters. In fact, one of the guys on my team owned his own company for 20 years, so, like, those kind of, really self driven people might not need that type of coaching, but maybe they do. Maybe that's a maybe that's more of a knock on me than them. And anyway, the nature of our conversation was really, if we're going to review our people at the end of the year, we just got done with our year, and now the evaluations with all of our people for my company, but if we're not willing to help them achieve their goals and our goals that we set, then really, they haven't failed. We have failed. And so it's really that mindset that got me thinking about this. And right now I'm listening
Mark D. Williams 03:24
to a book tape where it's it's by Bill Walsh, who was
Mark D. Williams 03:30
in charge of the West Coast offense back when the 40 Niners were, you know, rolling. They have Steve Young, Joe Montana. And the name of the book is called, the score takes care of itself. And I'm about halfway through. It's a good book. It's not a great book, but it's very good, and that the main thing out of it that I've gotten so far is the importance of coaching. You know, they Bill talked about how he was considered a genius, and really that was not a accurate description. He didn't like it. It put a target on his back. He really wanted to be known as a teacher, as a coach, and so we just talked about different leadership styles. And I'm not going to take this whole episode to talk about that, but really, just to put it out there that if you're an owner of your company, what are you doing? What am I doing to help coach the people on our team so that 2026, is the best year that they have had. And if that is the case, then you, as the business owner, will also have the best year that you've had. Because, you know, if everyone on your boat is Rowan in the galley slave analogy I'm putting out there right now as we're coming across the Atlantic Ocean in a in a Viking ship, you know, everyone's got a row and if everyone is going together in the same direction, like it's very powerful, and so thinking a little bit more about team building and a big vision, there'll be more to come in future episodes, but I would just challenge you as a listener, is to think of yourself as a coach. And if you were a coach, how would you grade yourself? How what are you doing to help people on your team sort of love? Up their skills. So anyway, that's enough of the coaching aspect of it. This weekend in the paper in the business section. Yes, I'm an old soul. I still read the paper every day we were out of town down to Mexico over the holiday break with the family, and so I had seven days of papers stacked up on my front when I got back. So I queued up the sauna after I put the kids to bed one night, and I read a week's worth of papers, two observations came from that. One is, when you read the paper every day, you sort of get, you get lulled into this, like it's new news. It's new news. But when you read seven days of papers in one day, it kind of seems like the same news just being recycled. I have no other observation other than that. So take it for what it's worth. Meaning, I could probably just read the news once a week and probably be just as fine, but the business section, Warren Buffett, the seer of Omaha, is stepping down as the acting CEO and handing it over to his successor. And so there's four quotes that I'm going to read that are some of his most famous quotes, tons of famous quotes at this point. If you don't know who Warren Buffett is, I'd be shocked, but if you don't look him up, he's amazing. The seer of Omaha still lives in the same house he grew up in. He's a multi, multi billionaire, incredible investor. Really understands value and can sort of predict markets in a way that if you're kind of in and out, that's not for you, but if you know you buy with something you believe, and he's just, he's obviously done an incredible job over his multi, I think, 50 year career, and making himself a lot of money, companies a lot of monies, and people that invest in him a lot of money as well. But here's one of my favorite quotes. It says the question was basically Summing up, how should you look at buying out of favor stocks and like, the timing of it? And he said, be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. And I was thinking about like, how does that apply to me as a as a builder? I think when you go into a market, like, if you do what everyone else does in your copycat you know you're going to kind of rise and fall along with everybody else. But ultimately, because building a home takes, let's just say a year at minimum. Let's say two years by the time you get financing plans designed for a spec home, in this analogy, you're really two years in arrear. So if you're, if you're coming to market with something that has been selling, the question is, is, will it sell two years from now? I don't know. I've never been a good spec home builder, but that's when I read that quote. I think about that, and then I think about, obviously, buying land and positioning yourself in the land development can be very, very lucrative and can, and it can really set you up for success. That being said, if you get caught on the wrong side of an investment by paying too much and the market changes, you can lose a lot of man money in land, at least with the house. You've got one house a development, you know, you're talking millions of dollars. And so it's a it's not for the faint of heart. And I think back in 2008 910, 11, cutting my teeth. Personally, through those years, I was lucky. I didn't have much to lose, because I just didn't have much. I started in 2005 and so I didn't have enough money to be that leveraged. And I think of a lot of the mid tier builders that had a lot of land or a lot of spec homes, like they, a lot of them went out of business, because even if they weren't over leveraged, they were because the market dropped 17,000 points. Everyone was over leveraged at that point in time, regardless of how conservative you were in a world of hurt. And so I think of the people on the backside of that, like it would have been a phenomenal time to start your business in 2010 1112, 13, because what you could buy and then obviously the build up over the next decade was incredible. So anyway, that's what that quote kind of means to me. Is a little bit counterculture. I mean, it's a little bit what I'm not exactly doing this, but with Misa, who's part of why I'm so bully on brand, and coming up with a concept that you believe in, but also resonates with the future is it gives you if you come up with a unique idea, or if you come up with something that galvanizes other to your cause, if you will, you are now no longer. You are setting the market versus copying the market. And now what you bring to market is fresh and new, and whoever tries to copy it or imitate it is going to be a couple of years behind it, that being doesn't mean it's going to be successful, but I think that's what he's saying, is be greedy in that situation when others might be fearful. So anyway, the second one, this one, is amazing. You only find out who's swimming naked when the tide goes out. First of all, it's a hilarious image. I was just in Mexico with my little kids, and so I'm just picturing like Simon and Tate, you know, if they're out swimming in the oceans, and the ocean goes out, and they'd walk out buck naked, be hilarious. But from a financial standpoint, like, when the market's rolling, like it is, it has been for the last year, like, if we were to have a crash, and I hope we don't have one, but I think we're going to have a correction, and the next year would be my guess. I don't know when. The stock market can't be at all time highs for this long. At some point there's going to be a correction. It just, you look at the past history, there always has been and so, you know, right now things, I think I can only speak for myself, but if someone was to ask me, am I optimistic? Sure, I'm always optimistic. But like, what do I there's a bit of we've got, personally, a couple of big homes under construction. So I feel like the custom home company is doing really well, but we had a couple years of really down years where other people were doing really well. So it's really cyclical, depending on where you are in the country and what you do personally, you know, we're a small builder with really high end finishes, and so it doesn't take very many homes to keep us really busy for a couple of years, but I do sense like there's a bit of a holding of breath over the last six months. And even as well, there's optimism. It seems like the top end of the market's doing really well. It's that middle that's really suffering right now. As I talk to other builders, it seems like the ones that are in the high end are doing pretty good, and they've got a lot of work coming in, but the ones in the middle are very like what's happening, and it's just people are holding their breath. They don't know. I think people sense that there's going to be a correction, but nobody really knows when it is. I mean, you look at unemployment numbers, things like that. So again, this quote is you only find out who's swimming naked when the tide goes out. I was after working out this morning. I was giving my buddy Ben a ride back to his house. He lives near me, and he had just talked about having, you know, different properties, like, Hey, I think I'm gonna pay down the mortgage on these rental properties at a higher rate, because paying down debt is always a good idea. I think that's something that Warren Buffett would probably also like. And so anyway, when things do correct, it really does expose how many of us are over leveraged financially and so mainly just something to always ask yourself as a business owner.
Mark D. Williams 11:52
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This next quote is something that Warren Buffett said in 1991 to a congressional committee explaining like why he makes trades and what he tells his employees, his managers and his partners. He goes, I say, I then want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear on the front page of their local paper to be read by their spouses, children and friends, with reporting done by an informed and critical reporter. I like that. The basically like whatever decision you make, are you willing to stand up in front of your family and your friends and said, This is the decision I made. It's ethical, it's honest, it's in best practices. And if you can, if you can say yes to that question, I think what Warren is basically saying is like, then I'll back your decision. But if you're, you know, trading in the dark, if you're operating in the grays, if you are, you know, trying to game the system like that wasn't for Warren Buffett. That's not how you build his empire. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, you have to ask yourself, like, am I going to do something that's repeatable. Are we always looking for the Grand Slam? I mean, what's wrong with singles, doubles, you know, load the bases before a grand slam comes into effect. And everyone loves, you know, a home run. But you know, you can be like each Rue Suzuki and make your living on on base hits, or Pete Rose anyway. I think that's just a really good quote. Are you willing to base? Physically stand in front of the people that you love and care about and explain that the actions that you're making that you would be fine with, whatever is revealed. I think that's true of like, if you look at like the IRS or your CPA, or, you know, as an owner of your company, like, there's 1000 ways we can spend money or depreciate money or do things, but like, can you stand in front of someone and justify, you know what you're doing in an ethical way. And if you can, then it's probably, it's probably a good thing to do, all right? This next quote, the last one from Warren Buffett, is, who you associate is just enormously important. Don't expect that you'll make every decision right on that, but you are going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people you work with, that you admire and that you become friends, Amen. Now it's kind of like what your parents told you when you're kids. You are who you hang out with. You know you are what you eat. I think that's also true. I think someone told me this was a quote maybe five, six months ago. I think I talked about on the podcast, look around at your five best friends, and I'll tell you your future. And I always thought that was a really good quote, and it makes you think about, like, who you spend your time with. I have a couple really close friends. It was interesting because my wife and I were having this conversation maybe two weeks ago, and she told me, and this the victim a little bit of me, just because I do have a big extrovert personality with fortunate to have a lot of acquaintances, a lot of friends, a lot of great friends, a lot of good friends. And I don't really delineate the differences between all of these friendships. I don't think it's important. I think friends can be I'm just able to be a friend with one person at one time and just, you know, whatever their friendship brings to me, I can really value that they don't not one person has to be a Swiss army knife and fill every single friendship thing that I need in life. That's a personal statement, some people have very few friends, but they sort of are their end all be all. There's no judgment there. It's no right or wrong. Like my wife has just a handful of friends, but they're very deep friends, and for her, and she's not really looking to add more, which is hard for me, because as an extrovert, I haven't, I haven't met anybody yet that I didn't want to be friends with, and so there's also only so much time in the day. But where I was going with this is her comment to me, was I said it's important to me that we have so and so over for dinner to our house. And my wife is very private, and we just don't have a lot of people over, because our home for her is kind of like her recharge zone. She just doesn't other than family. She just that's kind of her, her cave, if you will, if you're a Neanderthal back in the day, like the cave is where you restore, you build your fire, eat your food, and then go out into the jungle and but she's her comment to me was, she was like, I can't she said I didn't know that the couple that I mentioned was as dear friends as you said they were. And I said, Well, why is that? She goes, Well, I hear you talking all the time, and she named a bunch of people. And I said, Well, yeah, they're all great friends. And she's like, but are all of them your best friend? I'm like, I'm not really into like, the best friend scenario, but it's really just like, No, these two people are really, really, really important to me, and it's very valuable that they would come to our home like, I feel like, for me, it's disrespectful to not invite them over. And she said, Well, thank you for sharing. I did not know that, because I need to know, like, I just can't tell which friends of yours are really, really deep based on her judgment. And so it's just something that from I share this story of just, just the depths of friendships, and how sometimes people come along at the right time in your life and they become really valuable to your career. And kind of going back to this thing of Warren Buffett about the people you hang out with, like there are people now that I spend a significant amount of time with that five years ago, I didn't even know who they were. You know, I've talked about them a lot, obviously, on this podcast from a business point of view. I mean, Brad Levitt down in Arizona, Nick Schifrin, Boston, Morgan Molitor, Tyler, grace, and then all of our sponsor partners and the close friends I've made through the curious builder. I didn't know any of those people, not a single one of them three years, three and a half years ago, but now I talked to them weekly, texting daily, and you know, they're a huge part of my life. And so thinking a little bit about it was never, I never became friends with them so that I could start a podcast, because I didn't even know what a podcast was then. I didn't become friends with them to be a part of contractor coalition Summit, or they were just amazing people that I just clicked with that I became friends with. You spend a lot of time in people's orbits, and before you know it, like your friends, you're doing stuff together, and it makes sense to me now in a way that I didn't understand before, that, you know, when you spend a lot of time with people that you appreciate, you start doing business with them. You start doing, you know, vacations with them. You start doing personal things with them. You talk about your life. I've had as many equal parts personal conversations as business conversations. And you know, sometimes you can relate to somebody in a different way. And so each relationship is kind of special in its own way, and it's really nice. And you know, there are people that they're going through. Go through death, people go through divorce, people go through, you know, having new kids. They go through a remarriage and building a home, the ups and downs of business. And I think having. People in your life that you can model your behavior after that you can encourage each other, that they can encourage you like, obviously, I think I'm saying things that are obvious, but I just feel like as we turn the page on a new year, I'm just so thankful for the people in my life that have encouraged me and continue to do so, and in these deep friendships that I get, that I get to have and feed and be a part of. And I'm reminded I have a longtime friend from back in high school and college, and introduced her to her husband. They live in Charlotte now, but Laura, I doubt you'll ever listen to this episode, but this is you and but we used to always talk about, you know, watering your friendship garden. And I think sometimes people think, like they'd like to have a lot of friends, but like, to me, the true mark of a friend is someone that also feeds you're feeding their bucket and they're feeding yours. And so we used to always joke that, you know, we are gardeners, because we spent a lot of time watering our friend garden. And so she was a extrovert extraordinaire as well. And so we just, we both had a lot of friends. And so in the later years, she pruned her garden and had fewer friends. And so I used to always joke that I wasn't one of her a friends anymore, but I'm more of a B or C friend, and so just because she was no longer watering that garden anymore. So anyway, joke to her and I but anyway, just I love that we can have personal friendships, and you can have business friendships, and they can help you in your career, and they can help you in your personal life. And I feel life. And I feel like I don't always strike a perfect balance on the podcast. I think as I go through the things that I'm struggling with, or things that I'm doing really well with, like it obviously comes out in the topics I talk about, or the books that I'm reading, and hopefully, as the audience, hopefully this is something that appeals to you as well. I've mentioned a little bit before that we are doing
Mark D. Williams 21:41
the smile tour, and that's kicking off right now. So we'll do a blog post, and we'll make sure that everyone that subscribes to the show, everyone that follows our newsletter, gets it so you can follow along. But we're picking four books, and we are going to go down the west coast from, I think, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, California, that'll be q1 in the book, in q1 is going to be buy back your time by Dan Martell. I haven't read it yet, but a lot of business owners have, and it's one of their favorite books. And so every guest that I have on the show between now and the end of March will either have read that book or listened to that book, and a lot of the questions that I asked them about their business will be in relationship to that book. And I'm going to start reading the book this week, because I've got to get into the book pretty quick here, as I'm going to ask questions of all the upcoming guests, I think q2 we are doing the psychology of money. It was a gift over the holidays from my friend Tony kakanda, who's a very gifted thinker, worked for United Health, just a really smart dude. And so I just think anytime that I was it was either going to be that or profit first by Michael mcalew. It's maybe we'll do that one next year. But so this one's the psychology of money, just basically how we think about money. I think as entrepreneurs, we do obviously have to be aware of it. Liquidity is super important. But also, you know, we can get too focused on it. So what is the right balance? So that book is going to be really interesting. That'll be really interesting. That'll be q2 q3 is going to be relentless by Tim Glover. He was the personal trainer for Michael Jordan, and later Kobe Bryant, and then Dwayne Wade, a number of others athletes. But I read that one year, year and a half ago. Such an inspiring book. It makes you just want to niche down and absolutely dominate whatever you focus on, to the just the INS degree. And I really appreciated the clarity I got in that book and all the sporting analogies that you can apply to business. I just heard a quote actually today from Amanda birdie. She's from curio rugs, and she said that riches in the niches, and I like that reminded me of star belly sneetches, actually. But just that, when you niche down, or niche down, you can be very successful in that small little window. Sometimes it's scary to do that, and then other companies have been very successful in the little niche, and they try to get big, and it doesn't work. So anyway, just there's a lot to unpack with that one and then fourth quarter was my favorite book last year. We're going to read it again, which is unreasonable hospitality. So again, these will all be on the website. We'll talk a lot about them over the next year, as we do the smile tour. So that's going to come down the west coast in q1 q2 will be the South. Q3 will be the east and southeast, and then q4 will be east and northeast as we kind of wrap around the outer edge of the United States. Thanks for tuning in to Thursday's episode. Have a great start to your new year. 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.