Q & A Episode 27 - How Sauna Camp Can Kickstart Your 2025 Goal Setting!
Episode #27 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | How Sauna Camp Can Kickstart Your 2025 Goal Setting!
In this episode of The Curious Builder, Mark Williams kicks off the new year with a sneak peek into his ambitious goal-setting strategies and exciting plans for 2025. From launching the Mysa Hus project to training for a 100-mile trail run, Mark shares how he intends to stay focused and energized both personally and professionally. Plus, don’t miss the scoop on the upcoming Sauna Camp wellness retreat at Lake Minnewashta and other inspiring events.
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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
Coming up on january 24 at Lake minnewasha in Minnesota. We're holding our first inaugural wellness retreat. It's a half day called Sonic camp. All the details are curious. Builder podcast.com, under Events, Sonic camp, we're doing a half day retreat. Someone that we interviewed a few weeks ago named Dr Mel Krug. She's going to lead us through some somatic breath work. We have rented out the entire camp. We have 60 slots. You're going to walk down into the water, use your breathing techniques, then you're going to go into the sauna, rinse and repeat. And at the end, we have a Mediterranean cook cooking outside wood fire grill for everyone that's there to kind of embrace the community and really take a break as we kind of go into the new year with a fresh outlook. If you'd like to join us, you're going to have a lot of other business owners there, builders, architects, designers, some are flying in from across the country. That's gonna be a great event. Again. That's January 24 Sonic camp. We'd love to see you there. Last year, I did my first 50 mile trail race, and I found that the six months I trained for it gave me a lot of purpose and a lot of focus. What I noticed is, right after that, I sort of lacked a vision, and for about 60 days, I sort of wandered. I didn't know what my next goal was. And it's amazing that after 44 years, I finally figured out that I need something to focus on. I need something to train for. I need kind of this big event. I'm not Japanese at all, but this misogy thing just cannot get out of my brain. I just love this concept.
01:22
Ian, welcome to
Mark D. Williams 01:28
curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host, and today is our first episode for the new year. Pretty excited to be back in studio. Took a couple weeks off. We shut down the company, and one of the questions that was submitted was, basically, what are your 25 goals? And a couple years ago, I interviewed Jackson Schwartz from Hennepin made lighting, and really got the idea from him. It's one of the things I love probably the most about podcasting is obviously, you get to talk to all these talented entrepreneurs and business owners across the country, and they'll share little nuggets, and then you apply them to your business. And that's the hope and goals of even for those that are listening that through our community, through the stories that you're hearing here and that we're sharing, that we can all elevate our business and be better in the future than we were in the past, and improve anyway. One of the things that Jackson shared was that he shuts down his company for two weeks over the holidays. And I don't think that's completely unheard of. There's several people that do and for 18 years, I've had my building company for 20 years, but for 18 years, I basically shut down just the week of Christmas, those weeks that we didn't do that, where we would work between Christmas and New Year's, it seemed like there. Everyone was gone. It just seemed like you never got anything done, or at least I never got anything done. And it was nice to be around the office. You may be caught up on stuff, but at the end of the day, it seemed you were still at work. You never really then you came back after the holidays and you didn't really feel recharged. And so after hearing how Jackson shut his company down that I think, I interviewed him in June, and then six months later, we just made that our new company policy. And the reason I'm bringing it up is I find it I basically didn't look at my email for two weeks straight, and we'd let our clients know ahead of time that we'd be shut down for our team, for myself to really recharge, reset, refocus. And I have to say, I am ready to go for 25 very excited. I spent a lot of time, which is hard for me, just writing. I don't normally do that. My friend Morgan molder talks all the time about journaling and writing, and I spent a lot of time just writing. I think I spent probably two to three days off and on over the couple weeks to take an hour here, two hours there, to write down goal lists, personal, professional, just get all these things that are in my head down on paper. It was really cathartic just to write it and just expound on where those things might lead. And so I've given a little off thought. I don't really love the term New Year's resolutions, but I do like goals. I think it's potato however you make yourself do something, go for it. The other thing I'm kudos to Jackson was, Is he also gives his team off the week of July 4, so in six months. And so we adopted that as well. And I bring that up because I think this space of clarity in this sort of time off, I know I've been guilty of it my entire career, of not giving myself enough time to really do what I'm best at, which is creativity, and I need that quiet time. And I've spoken a lot recently on the podcast about wellness. We have Sonic camp coming up in just a few weeks, on January 24 for anyone nearby here in Minnesota, there's a few people flying in that's to celebrate wellness a half day to just be with other like minded individuals, celebrate the finish culture, sauna, cold plunge, that kind of thing. We've talked about it previously, so I won't go into it a lot depth right now, but it's really these are stepping stones that I found helpful for me, and I'm really excited to share that with other people. Pardon me if I'm banging the drum pretty hard on this, but I really believe in it, and I'm really passionate about it, and sometimes you've got to get. Push people out of their comfort zone, for them, really, to take that next step, to evolve. And so sometimes it's your friend, sometimes it's your friendly, curious builder, sometimes it's a colleague, sometimes it's competition. You see what competition is doing, and you're like, Okay, I need to do that in my homes or in my business. And for me, a lot of my intentions for next year are based on these concepts, and I think I do better. I always like milestones of things I want to achieve, and certainly some of the things I've written down, they are specific things, but a lot of them are concepts. And I find that I do really well with like a mantra. And I haven't done this in the past. Last year, I think unintentionally, my two mantras ended up being it was informed by a book I read. One was unreasonable hospitality, and I've spoken about that quite a bit on the podcast, but I think just really focusing on what hospitality is, and I have hardly implemented anything. It's really just been on my mind, and I think that's where it starts first. So coming into this new year hospitality, we're creating something for our clients called the client experience roadmap, and it's been a work in progress off and on over the last six eight months, and we're going to continue to develop it and really map it out very specifically. But I bring it up because my I like quotes, and so my favorite quote last year. If you've been listening to podcast, you've heard me say it a lot. It's boundaries create freedom, and it's still my one of my favorite quotes. I don't have a 25 quote yet. I have a few in the running, and I'll share it when I'm ready to, but I think my plan is actually going to write down the quote along with a few of my main goals for the year and put them on my bathroom mirror. We'll see if my wife lets me keep them up there, but basically that every day, I would be reminded of what I've set my intentions to be. And I think less is probably better than more, because I think everything can center around those things. And I spoke about it previously. I had written an article about or read an article about a Japanese philosophy, masagi or misogy but basically it's just this one thing that would define your year, and it should have a 50% chance of failing. It should scare you, and it should challenge you. And maybe you keep it to yourself. Maybe you share it, because this is a podcast, it wouldn't do any good if I didn't share it. So I guess I'm gonna share a couple of mine that I have, why I have basically one for the company, for my building company, Mark Williams custom homes, and then once for myself personally. And I'm just going to expound a little bit about how those single things are going to dictate my entire year. So my masagi for Mark Williams Custom Homes is really the development, the marketing and the building of our first spec home in 16 years, we've it's called Misa whose which in Swedish, is cozy, inviting. It's like a sense of family time. And we've been working with a branding company, lab Minneapolis, and they are doing terrific work here. You'll start seeing a lot of it show up on our social media platforms. We're actually creating the marketing plan right now to basically every two weeks for a year, we'll be marketing this concept, this philosophy, as well as we build the home. And so in the beginning, it's going to be all about the branding, the website, landing page, the graphics. We're going to really empower past clients that know us so well to also help be our our fan base on how to spread this out to local people. Obviously, the goal is to sell it before we even get a shovel in the ground. But I really want to build this house, and I think it'll really be challenging if somebody or not, if, but when somebody decides to buy it, if they want to change it, if I'll let them, I suspect I probably will. I think that's always as someone who wants to create something, I really believe strongly in what we're creating in this home, in this philosophy, and we'll save this for another podcast, because we'll create a whole series of what we're doing here. But that's really my main that's my one goal for Mark Williams, custom homes. Everything else I do this year will be based around that. Yeah. So anyway, that's my one goal for for the company. And I think some of the smaller goals that I have is I'm going to bring back thank you Thursday note cards. I used to do this a while back, where every Thursday I would write two thank you cards and just mail it. Could be a subcontractor, could be a client. I just really appreciate handwritten cards. And so it's something that I can do. And so I've dedicated time. Every Thursday pops up on my schedule and I come in, first thing I do is just write two thank you notes. And then the other thing I noticed, during this two weeks off that I've had over the holidays, I really appreciate just the time to relax my mind is just running 1000 miles a minute. But I think having completed the 75 hard challenge with a group of builders, a lot of it when I was injured, I had to do a lot of walking, and I don't really like walking, I have come to actually really enjoy walking, and I usually would listen to a podcast or listen to something, but now I've enjoyed just the silence, which is rare for me. It's really hard. Me to get quiet time. It's very meditative, and by doing that, it allows that sort of quiet time to work through your thoughts and work through all your ideas. And these two weeks off, I've had to really plan what I want to do in 25 and really reflect on the successes and the failures of 24 I have plenty of them. Maybe we'll keep that for the next Thursday. What failed and what what succeeded last year? That'd be a good episode. But I've decided that I'm gonna basically block off once a quarter, a full week of no meetings, and I just need to time block. It's something that I need to do, because if my schedule is open, I'll fill it. And so I need to obviously fill it with things that'll help me be productive. And one of the things that gives me anxiety is a big inbox. And yes, right now I have a huge inbox because I didn't check it for two weeks, but I'll get through it. And where I'm going with this is I feel like I don't want to wait just once a year to catch up, or twice a year. I feel like it needs to be more intentional for me,
Mark D. Williams 11:11
this episode is brought to you by Pella Northland. For 20 years, I've been using Pella windows, and I couldn't be happier to call them as a business partner, a trade partner, and someone that really supports us in our quality builds. We use wood windows and doors on every single one of our homes, and 98% of every home that I've ever built has been a Pella window. I've gotten to know their team here, locally as well as nationally, and the way that they support us as a craftsman as well as they support our homeowners with their lifelong guarantee. It's actually been a game changer for me. So when people ask me who I use, I recommend Pella. If you want to hear more about Pella story, you can listen to episode one, where I interview Peter and Ed from Pella Northland about their journey into the Pella ownership. And so I'm going to try, I'm actually going to have a number of time blocking techniques that I currently have in my system, and my plan is to delete all of them and then reset new intentions for 25 try something different, and one of them is once a quarter, I'm just going to have a week where I have no meetings, like obviously, I'll have my operations meeting and I'll have my client meetings if I have a standing client meeting with a couple. But other than that, I'm not going to take a coffee meeting. I'm not going to take a podcast. I'm not going to take anything. It's just that week is to really dial down on catching up, on taking kind of one quarter at a time. I know this is not probably a shocking statement, but I need to actually do it, and I'm really excited about it. And then the other thing I'm going to do, and actually do it this time, is shout out I've talked to many times. I love this idea. Caleb McDonald, from Canada, Toronto, he's been on the podcast before we chatted about how he takes one day a month to get on a train and go to a different part of the city and just work at a coffee shop on his business. And so it's a little bit you have the quarterly milestone, and this is going to be a monthly milestone where you just take a half day, or in a day, and basically you go somewhere different. Now your office, I'll probably go to Stillwater, Northfield, maybe Duluth, and really just get out of the normal daily grind and just have that free space to really work on things. So anyway, those are my big goal, the MISA, who's and then these three small goals. So those are going to be my milestones for 25 for the business personally, which obviously we all have personal lives, and we have things that drive us, I've found that so much of what I do personally sort of energizes my business. I feel like they're actually really important, that they whether they align, but that they should definitely compliment each other and and so for me, I've decided whether it's a good one or not. We'll see. But I found that one of the and we're gonna have a separate podcast with everyone that did the 75 hard together, because we're all builders, and so I thought it'd be interesting to talk about that. But I found, for me that last year I did my first 50 mile trail race, and I found that the six months I trained for it gave me a lot of purpose and a lot of focus. And again, it could be any distance, it doesn't matter. Could be a marathon, could be a first 10k but what I noticed is right after that, I lacked a vision, and for about 60 days as wandered, I didn't know what my next goal was. And I it's amazing that after 44 years, I finally figured out that I need something to focus on. I need something to train for. I need this big event. I'm not Japanese at all, but this misogy thing is just cannot get out of my brain. I just love this concept of this one thing. And so that's what led to the 75 hard group, and really, the mental discipline to stay together, the accountability, it was less physically demanding for me as it was mentally demanding. And so I really appreciated the discipline things that I learned there. And so I'm really excited to use those discipline approaches here in 25 so I decided to in August, good friend of mine, Nathan, he turns 40, and he invited me and my. Wife and his wife were going out to Mount Rainier, and he's always wanted to do the Wonderland Trail, which is this, you circumnavigate Mount Rainier. And I climbed Mount Rainier with my roommate in college 20 years ago, probably. And so it's a beautiful area, and he said, I want to run around it. I'm like, Cool, all right. How far is it? He's like, 95 miles over three days. I'm like, Oh, wow, that's pretty cool. So we're going out as a couple, and Nathan and I will run it, and my wife and Eric are going to do other things during those three days. But what in you can run, you can walk, it's just going to be outside. But I'm really doing it for Nathan. I'm excited to do it, but it got me thinking that, when am I ever going to run 95 miles over three days? Because this summer, I was planning on doing a half Ironman or do a bunch of triathlons and get back to my swimming and biking routes rather than just running all the time and but after talking to some buddies, I'm like, if I'm ever going to do 100 mile trail run, I think this has to be the year, because with this big 95 mile training event, it peaks you perfectly for a big race. So anyway, it's a long way of saying I signed up for the cascade 100 which is in Bend, Oregon, and it's a couple weeks after this Wonderland Trail, which will be my my Apex training block. And so now, for the next eight months, I've got a very clear path of what I want to do for the next 60 days. I'm gonna be working on strength, doing a lot of gym work and weights, which I don't normally do, just to build out strength so that you don't get injured. So we'll see how that goes. And then, basically, I've picked other races along the way. I'm gonna take my family and we're gonna go out and do the Leadville marathon, and that's in June. And so you have these little milestones. And I'm breaking it down like this, because you can pick whatever goal you want, but it's like this one big goal, then I can work backwards and pick different races or milestones or things that I need to do in order to support that one goal, I'm going to dedicate more time to recovery, stretching, massage, things like that, in order to stay healthy. And so I like this approach, that this one thing has set off a cascade of effects, of things that I have to do. It actually relates, obviously, towards building a home you're going to build like this Misa, whose goal that I have, I'm building this one whole but mark our home. But marketing is a part of it, reaching out your past clients so these one goals can have such a huge effect, almost like a firework, of the initial detonation, but the blossom of of the color and the explosion of the fireworks hits such a big target. And so I feel like, for me, I'm really excited about these two goals. I think on top of that, it's again, back to this Japanese principle that I'm blanking on the name of it, but basically getting rid of things. And so I've decided that I'm going to get rid of two things every day. And I love kind of the new year, get rid of things, reorganize, throw things, what you don't use. And so I was obviously doing the math today, and I was like, Well, if I get rid of two things every day, I'm going to get rid of 730 things. Could be in my office, it could be at home, could be clothing, it could be shoes, could be jackets, it could be old files. It could be old plans that you had in your plan drawer. Honestly, it's not that big of a deal, because I think you could find pretty easy things to get rid of. But I think for me, it's the intentionality of I'm not a hoarder by any means, but I tend to hold on to stuff because I think I might need it, or I hold on to something because I want to follow up with it. If I deal with it right now, I don't have it won't take up my time and my mind space in the future. And so I'm really excited to do this in the beginning. It's really easy, because I'm getting rid of way more than two things a day, as you like. For instance, tomorrow I'm gonna spend an hour cleaning the office and just getting rid of stuff. And anyway, so that's one of the things I want to do personally. The other thing that I learned through this 75 hard was you had to read 10 pages a day. And I've always been a super avid reader, but with I've got three kids, and I get tired go to bed pretty early because I wake up early, and it's what am I fitting in reading. And so you had to read 10 pages. And now I'm obsessed, having, of course, been on vacation, it was a lot easier to read. And so now I've got a stack of books, but I'm really going to dedicate time to reading Ted pages in a book that could be a business book, it could be a fun book, it could be whatever it is. And so I'm really excited about that. So anyway, those are my to answer the question. Those are my two, essentially, my two giant goals for 25 I haven't come up with one yet for the curious builder, I'm still noodling that around, so stay tuned. That'll be a future episode. Have a great week, and Happy New Year. We're excited to announce that the curious builder collectives are going into three other states. For those not familiar with what the collective is, it lives between what the contractor coalition is and a builder 20 group. What we do in each state is we have a group of 25 to 30 builders that get in a room, and you break up into groups of nine. You spend 45 minutes talking about a set topic, whether it's branding, marketing, contracts, whatever that set topic is for that day. And then you talk for 45 minutes. You get up. You mix up the groups, and you do it again, and you're out of there, you'll be out in under three hours. We're going to be going to Phoenix, Arizona. Brad Levitt is going to be leading a curious collective in Phoenix, Arizona. We are going to San Antonio. We've got David and Angela Penske from Penske homes, leading a group down there. And we have Brad Robinson and Vince Longo in Atlanta, Georgia, also leading a collective, as well as obviously me in Minnesota as well for our second annual collective. So you're interested in collaborating with other builders. If you really want to dive deep on your business in a person to person relationship, ask a lot of questions. The collectives are for you. We also have in Minnesota interior design collective as well as the architect collective. Check out the Events page at the cures builder podcast.com. Thanks for tuning in the cures 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. You.
