Q & A Episode 20 - Managing Time Like a Pro: Builder's Tips on Efficient Scheduling
Episode #20 | Q&A with Mark D. Williams | Managing Time Like a Pro
In this episode of The Curious Builder, Mark Williams dishes out his favorite time management hacks that keep him sane as an entrepreneur and podcast host. He chats about everything from time blocking and tackling top tasks, to keeping a good balance between work and family. Plus, he shares how setting boundaries and squeezing in some “me” time can make all the difference.
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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 Williams [00:00:00]:
Every time we sign on a client, whether it's a remodel or a new build, we will ask them to pick a day of the week and a time that they like. And we try to rule off Friday afternoons and not Mondays. So basically Tuesday through Friday at 1 o'clock where they can pick a 90 minute window and we devote, if it's a new build, maybe the next two years, that day is theirs every two weeks. So if it's Friday morning at 9:00, 26 Fridays of the year. So every other week that 9:00 time is slot for them, specifically for them, it's for meeting them on site, maybe doing a virtual meeting. What I find that's really helpful about this is this has actually cut down a ton of communication, unless it's necessary from the client to us. They know they're going to meet with us. And we've sort of trained them to either save their questions or book in their questions.
Mark Williams [00:00:46]:
I know we do for them. I don't want to overwhelm. A lot of our clients are very busy, you know, owners in their own rights and they're running their businesses. And so what we'll often do is we'll have a agenda and we'll just add to that agenda throughout the two weeks and anything that gets pushed off makes it onto the next week's agenda. Welcome to Curious Builder podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today's question is all about time management hacks. The question was submitted to basically saying, as an entrepreneur, how do you structure your week and what do you sort of put in place? And so I thought I'd take maybe 10, 15 minutes here to just talk about the things that work for me.
Mark Williams [00:01:31]:
Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Things that I've picked up from other entrepreneurs, things I've learned over my career, and basically some things that I want to do going forward. So I guess for me the last couple years I've really focused a lot on time blocking, probably more than any single thing that has helped me the most. And so I'm not alone in this. I know a lot of people spend a lot of time living out of their calendar. And so for me, my calendar is everything. What I do, what I'm planning to do. I oftentimes will block off time for emailing or for writing or I used to have something on Thursdays, thank you Thursdays for a couple years where every Thursday I would write two thank you notes.
Mark Williams [00:02:12]:
And sometimes these time blocks last for a while and, and you see if they work for you, see if they don't, see if they fit with the other things that you're trying to do. And so I've been guilty of heav having too many time blocks. I think sometimes if you do too many, then you're not able to have any sort of freedom in your schedule. And I feel like that's a constant ebb and flow. I. I definitely struggle with that sometimes. I'll maybe towards the end of the year I make a big effort this year and really not scheduling anything the month of December, other than just main priorities with clients and some of our internal team stuff just to leave the space open. And it really takes me about four to eight weeks looking ahead to sort of reset my schedule.
Mark Williams [00:02:49]:
And so around the holidays I'll probably clear my schedule and red new time blocks for new priorities and see how that works. But maybe I'll share what I currently do. I think. Mondays I always keep free of any appointments. And so I like to come in. I like to round on the jobs on the way in. So like today is a Monday when I'm recording this, it'll air on a Thursday. But I like to come in.
Mark Williams [00:03:10]:
I'll take photos and videos of all the job sites. I stop by, meet the homeowners if they're around, talk to the guys if they're working on whatever and just kind of see get my eyes on it. So I know what's going on that week. And then basically I come in and really those next couple hours is just treat triaging my email, you know, figuring out what's a priority, what's not. I should back up before I even do that. I started doing this about a year ago. I have a physical daytime planner and I really like. It has a grid sheet on the right and the dates on the left.
Mark Williams [00:03:38]:
I almost never use kind of the dates on the left. I use my digital camera or calendar for this. But I'll write down the top four things that I need to do that week. What are the most. Four most influential things. And I would say for the last year I'll write them down and I almost either never get them done or I save it till Friday. There's a great book out there called Eat this Frog or something like that, Eat this frog. But basically do the hardest or you know, eat the thing you don't want to eat.
Mark Williams [00:04:04]:
Eat the frog first. So today, for instance, I had four things listed for this week and I did three of them by 1:00. And so basically my new goal here through the End of the year is after Monday morning, after I jot down my four most critical things for the whole week is spend the majority of my time doing those four things. Like, I know if I move those four things in the whole week, this week will be successful. What has happened for me in the past is I'll usually have two columns. One for Mark Williams Custom Homes, which is my building company, and one for the Curious Builder, which obviously is the is the Curious Builder podcast, among other things that we're doing, collectives and events and all these other things. And I'll list down anywhere from 10 to 15, like minor things like follow up with a sponsor if it's a podcast, or you know, do a new ad read or you know, invite a new guest or set your schedule or whatever. And then in the custom home site it might be, you know, work on a bid or work on this.
Mark Williams [00:04:58]:
And so there are things that don't have to get done, but obviously they're on my mind. So I like to brain dump and get them all out on paper. The problem, and I suspect many entrepreneurs out there are like this is I always do the easiest stuff first. I'm like, oh, boom. It feels really good to sort of cross something off. So I'll be like, you know, email a new person you want to interview. Boom, done. Update your LinkedIn marketing bids.
Mark Williams [00:05:19]:
Boom, done. But at the end of the week, if you only take care of those 15 things, those top four big movers, the things that feed your business and the things that are really like do your contract, or a lot of times are the things that either take a lot of mental fortitude, they take a lot of time, or they're often things that you don't want to do. We tend to make things, make time for the things that we do want to do. So anyway, that's kind of how I set my schedule for the week. And then every Monday at noon or 11:30, I think it is 11:30, I have a half hour meeting with my controller, my bookkeeper, and we sit down, go through a balance receivable. I just like to keep a pulse on it. It doesn't have to be long. It could be a 10 minute, 15 minute meeting.
Mark Williams [00:05:57]:
So I keep that. And then every Monday at 1:00 we'll have our operations meeting for 90 minutes to two hours. And so we sit down with our team, we'll go through all the jobs. And this is nice because I've maybe already rounded the jobs, I've seen him that morning. And so I'll Go through. We have kind of a working doc sheet. Just want to hear from the team, where are we at? What's, what do you need my help with? Where's our clients at? What kind of bids are we looking for? And then I'll report back to them. Since I'm sort of in charge with sales.
Mark Williams [00:06:21]:
I'll say, hey, here's the, you know, here's the four or five active jobs we're bidding on or designing. You know, I talked to this homeowner, they're thinking about putting this off six months. I like to let team kind of know, you know, what we're working on. So that's our operations meeting. And having it that first day of the week is actually really helpful. We used to have it later in the week and I find that it's much more beneficial on the first day of the week and then the rest of the week I keep, you know, pretty open. I mean it gets obviously filled, but I don't have anything really set. I do have, when we work with a client, like right now, Friday mornings, we have a bi weekly meeting and I have found this extremely helpful.
Mark Williams [00:06:57]:
I think we started doing this maybe a year and a half ago where every time we sign on a client, whether it's a remodel or a new build, we will ask them to pick a day of the week and a time that they like. And we try to rule off Friday afternoons and not Mondays. So basically Tuesday through Friday at 1 o'clock where they can pick a 90 minute window and we devote the, if it's a new build, maybe the next two years, that day is theirs every two weeks. So if it's Friday morning at 9:00, 26 Fridays of a year. So every other week that 9:00 time is slot for them, specifically for them, it's for meeting them on site, maybe doing a virtual meeting. What I find that's really helpful about this is this has actually cut down a ton of communication unless it's necessary from the client to us. They know they're going to meet with us. And we've sort of trained them to either save their questions or book in their questions.
Mark Williams [00:07:47]:
I know we do for them. I don't want to overwhelm. A lot of our clients are very busy, you know, owners, owners in their own rights and they're running their businesses. And so what we'll often do is we'll have a agenda and we'll just add to that agenda throughout the two weeks and anything that gets pushed off makes it onto the next week's agenda and it's kind of our rolling agenda. We'll meet with them. We, we try to send that agenda to them the day before so they have an idea look ahead of what we're going to talk about. If the architect's on board, we'll send it to the architect as well. Designers and then we meet on site and then that in this example, this Friday morning meeting at 9 o'clock, we'll spend 90 minutes going through the job site, going through any questions, any samples that need signed off on anything like that.
Mark Williams [00:08:25]:
And it just keeps a nice rhythm and I, I think the clients feel really valued and I know, I really like it as well. The other thing that we'll do in conjunction with that is we will of course, you know, update our builder trend every Friday. So we're giving them a weekly recap of what happened that weekend, a look ahead. But that's more the project manager than me. So I'll maybe go back to the time management hacks. I think one thing that I've recently done a poor job of, it's on my calendar, but I keep. It's so tempting to cancel it is I interviewed Caleb McDonald from Canada, Toronto, Canada, last year and he had a really eye opening way of doing things. He, he picked one day a month where he spent the whole day out of the office working on the business.
Mark Williams [00:09:10]:
And I've mentioned this before on the podcast, he'll take a train into Toronto and he'll maybe dress up a little bit differently so he feels like he's going someplace different. And he'll go to a favorite coffee shop or a restaurant or whatever and he'll work the whole day there. He'll turn off his phone so his people can't get a hold of him. And he's just really devoted to the business. And I have that on my calendar to do, I think every other month. And I haven't done it once yet. Like I went in Minnesota here. Like I'm gonna go to Stillwater, I'm gonna go to Northfield, or I'm gonna go to Duluth.
Mark Williams [00:09:36]:
And there's always been something that I've felt has come up that's really important, like getting a contract signed or getting it done, which is really important. But my, one of my goals for 25 is to keep that set in stone. Like that's just a meeting that's non negotiable because working on the business, it's really hard sometimes when you're in your office. I know some people will Stay at home. But I feel like I need to just get out of the norm. And so that's something I want to try to do for next year. Thursdays I usually keep Thursdays afternoons open for recording with a guest on the podcast. So I kind of keep that devoted time and then even like my yearly reviews with my people.
Mark Williams [00:10:12]:
I used to always, it was got too late in the year and then I'd always kind of scramble to try to get all these one on one interviews scheduled. So now what we do is we have it every four months. We just have a date that rolls. And so I think when I talked to my employees last time, they didn't want to do it around Christmas. So we do it I think like the third week of January after the holidays are all done and then it'll kick it down again to like April, May, and then I'll kick it again to the fall. So we do it three times a year and it's, you know, you're constantly checking in with your people, seeing where they're at. So I find that just having that on the calendar, I don't have to schedule it. The biggest help for me in terms of time blocking is, you know, making sure that my mind is clear.
Mark Williams [00:10:51]:
And I've spoken many times on the podcast as the reason why we're doing sauna camp, the reason we're doing boot camp. And if you're not familiar with those, you can head to the website under events and see what those are all about. But you know, just exercise mental clarity. So, you know, pretty much every morning of the week, actually every day, you know, I'm going to get up at 5, 5:30 and you know, go for a walk, go for a run, bike, lift, weight, swim, you know, whatever your exercise is. But I find that if I don't get that workout in early, I'm thinking about it all day. I'm thinking about, well, when I pick up the kids or when I drop off the kids, like how am I going to squeeze 45 minutes or an hour or however long I need to work out into the day. And it adds an element of stress that if I know that I can't get it till the end of the day or the evening, it just, you sort. I'm not a real anxious person, but it sort of just weighs in the back of your mind.
Mark Williams [00:11:39]:
And for somebody like myself, I just, I have a lot of energy and honestly exercising gives me more energy, but in a more controlled way. So if I can get out that energy, I know it's Good for me physically, but I'd say a big part of it is just mentally. I feel like it really allows me to focus. And I'd say my most productive time is really from about 5:30 to 1 or 2:00. One of the things I'm trying to sort of time block, if you will, is to schedule. I get energy from people. So one of the things I'm trying to do is schedule more afternoon meetings knowing that if I can do all of my work earlier in the day when I'm really focused and that's when I'm probably my best from my mind point of view, that's the time for me to do contracts or the time for me to get creative on design or to brainstorm about, you know, business ideas or whatever I need to do. Or, you know, eat that frog if you will.
Mark Williams [00:12:31]:
I need to do it before 1, 2 o'clock. I start to fade a little in the afternoon, whether it's, you know, just having a lot in your mind or whatever. And so I would rather go to a job site or I'd rather meet with a client because I love people and so I get energy from them. That's probably one of the reasons why I tend to do my podcast interviews in the afternoon is, you know, I'm able to kind of ramp up my energy when I am interviewing somebody. So those are just some time hacks that have been really helpful for me to manage my time. This episode is brought to you by Alpine Hardwood Flooring. They've been our partner now for over a decade installing all our wood floors on all our new homes as well as our remodels. And on a personal level, Adam and Anthony Jinkle are the owners.
Mark Williams [00:13:19]:
Are just absolutely amazing people. They've been so supportive of my career as well as doing anything. We need to make sure that our clients are happy. And they work so well with our other vendors and trade partners at not only protecting their product but also ensuring everyone else's looks great. So if you're looking for a wood floor or for a refinish, I highly recommend Alpine hardwood flooring. Lake Society Magazine is Minneapolis premier Target market boutique lifestyle and design publication. It embodies the unique lifestyles and design of the Minneapolis City Lakes neighborhoods from Lake of the Isles to Lake Harriet. It showcases the best in local design projects by both premier builders architects and interior designers in this area.
Mark Williams [00:13:58]:
Lake Society Magazine has the look and feel of a national publication with glossy covers, high end finishes. It's mailed directly to upper bracket single family homeowners in the city lakes area and it's the perfect local coffee table top publication. Subscriptions can also be available through the website lakesocietymagazine. Additionally, publisher and founder Karen Steckel has over 27 years in the local magazine publishing industry and has a passion for high end photography and quality graphics. Her commitment to quality, visual simplicity and beauty are strongly reflected in her beautiful Lake Society magazine. Sometimes you can over commit and so like I said before, I've done it where I've time blocked too much and you can just paralyze your schedule and you leave no time for anything. And I look around at other successful entrepreneurs and people that I really admire and something that I would like to model and I don't know how much of it is personality versus they just have a really good handle on it but they seem so calm. Like if you call them and ask them for their time, like they're very available.
Mark Williams [00:15:00]:
And so I would like to work on that better so that I think if I can be more efficient with my scheduling and with my time then I'm going to be more available, calmer for my team. And so one of the things that I've been kind of working on over the last five to six months is you know, to be more available to my team, to spend more time with them. You know, sometimes, you know, as a small company I'm so busy, you know, trying to do all the things that are on my, on my task list that you know, I'm not making enough time for training or just spending time with your team. So I think from a culture standpoint but also from a, it's not like I abandoned the team, it's just my list is never ending. Like any entrepreneur, I'm not alone in this. And so I think if they see that the leadership is calm and collected and has time for them, I think it sends a message all the way down and sends a message to yourself. So that's something I'm, I'm working on. I'm not perfect, worked at it by any means.
Mark Williams [00:15:53]:
Definitely a work in progress. I've spoken about this before having, you know, my favorite quote here this last year has been boundaries create freedom. And I keep saying it and it's true and I think for me, you know, I have a couple hard boundaries. One is, you know, from 7 to 8 o'clock, you know, that's time I'm getting my kids up, taking them to school. I enjoy that time together. And then in the evening, you know, pretty much from 5 to 8 from the time I pick up the kids to put them down for bed, that is very sacred time. I don't do work calls, I don't do work. And frankly, I rarely ever do work after that anyway.
Mark Williams [00:16:27]:
I'm too tired. And so for me, having those boundaries, calm, time management, if you want, if you want, or time blocking, it's just, that's family time blocking. And you know, I think in terms of not only the podcast, but my personal life that, you know, I've had some people say, oh, the podcast takes away from your company. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think it adds to it. But even if it takes time, so let's just assume that it's taking one day a week of my time, that's fine. But if it's giving me energy, you know, if I could only work for five more years because I'm just burned out building homes after 20 years, you know, what good does that do me? But if I, if by giving up one day a week to talk to other builders and to, you know, hear their stories, if that is what energizes me and gives me energy to build for another 20 years, well, man, working at, you know, 80% capacity for 20 years is a whole lot better than working 100% for five years. And so that's kind of how I look about, look at time blocking or making time for yourself, making time for your family, which obviously has to be priority number one in my opinion.
Mark Williams [00:17:28]:
And nobody is above this. I mean, there are times where I have to get reevaluated my priorities, you know, by those that are closest to you. Your spouse, your family, your kids, other peers. I had someone in my builder 20 that got a heart wrenching letter from their 11 year old daughter that basically said, you know, dad, I don't spend enough time with you. And it almost just choked me up. And I, you know, this is a person I text with a lot and I immediately called them and I just said, you know, let's, let's talk it out, you know, I'm there for you. And it's like, it's hard. I mean, we're all through.
Mark Williams [00:17:59]:
You know, as an entrepreneur, you, you know, like somebody else said, you know, we're doing this for our family, but a lot of times our ego gets in the way. We're doing this for ourselves. And I think it's okay as long as you realize and have some perspective on what you're doing and why you're doing it and then having some, some boundaries. And I I feel like I've. I've had a lot of help in this from, mainly from my spouse in, in helping me understand this. And it's not easy. And I, I think surrounding yourself with people that can give you perspective on your time management is super, super critical, including your employees and, you know, really anybody. I think if you are going to empower people to help you with this, you're going to have to listen to their advice too.
Mark Williams [00:18:37]:
There's a. There's a great actually verse, I think it's in Proverbs where it says, you know, faithful are the wounds of a friend. And basically the way I interpret that is, you know, people that really care aren't afraid of hurting your feelings by telling you the truth. And I think it's up to us to listen. And, you know, hopefully people aren't swinging bats and hurting us on purpose, but it's important to listen to the people that are close to you because they do have your best interests in heart, because they also have their best interest in heart. And so if your team, not only your business, but your team at your personal family is asking for more time, we need to figure that out. And that's. It's not always easy.
Mark Williams [00:19:12]:
Sometimes it's as easy as taking your kids to work. I brought the kids the other day in to have some time on the podcast and hear them recording. And it was just awesome to watch them ask questions to each other. And I'm gonna have to do a curious kids episode because it's pretty funny. I don't want to undervalue. You know, sometimes we do have to work. Sometimes you do have to work late at night. Sometimes you might have to do a weekend.
Mark Williams [00:19:31]:
Not a regular thing, but, you know, you gotta. You gotta do what you gotta do. And I think showing your kids that bringing them in rather than alienating would be really important. And my kids are pretty young, but, you know, every time I. One of them is sick and I bring them to the job site, I mean, it's like their favorite day of the week. They love it. And it's a lesson for me to remind myself of how important it is to sort of them what you're doing and bring them into the experience. And so I.
Mark Williams [00:19:57]:
That's something that I guess I need to add to my 25 list. Going back to the time management. There's a great book out there called Atomic Habits. I know a lot of entrepreneurs that have read it, and it's been maybe a year or two since I've read it. But the thing that left the biggest impression on me was habit stacking, you know, And I guess to put this in a frame is like, let's say you're really good at emailing. Let's say that's your thing. Well, what is something you're not good at? Maybe you're not good at invoicing. And so what they encourage you to do is, you know, do like an hour of emailing and then at the end of your emailing, send out two invoices.
Mark Williams [00:20:33]:
Or like, basically you take something that's difficult for you to do and you add it to something you're really good at. I mean, it could be same. I mean, honestly, it applies to anything. It could be, you know, reading a book. Maybe you're really good at reading a book, but bad at drinking water, for instance. Maybe, maybe every chapter of a book, you know, you drink a glass of water and so you're habit stacking. I mean, maybe it's. You're bad at doing weight loss lifting, but you're really good at running.
Mark Williams [00:20:58]:
So maybe after every workout, after you're done running, you know, your five mile loop around a lake, you know, you drop down and do 50 pushups, whatever it might be. And so you can kind of have fun with this one and try habit stacking things that you're not good with with things that you are. And I think it takes like 30 to 45 days and then that habit is set. Right now the, the reason I'm sort of thinking in those terms is it started off with just three of us. I think it was Mike Weaver, Brad Levitt and Brad Robinson. Every morning we text each other on this group chain. And before you know it, we've got 13 builders and, and, you know, construction junkies around the country doing 75 hard together. And so it's been really sort of comedy, but also accountability to do these things together as a group.
Mark Williams [00:21:42]:
And so if you follow our Instagram, you can kind of see us tagging on the weekends. So basically, for those that don't know what that is, it's two 45 minute workouts a day. One of them has to be outside. You have to drink a gallon of water, you have to read 10 pages in a book, you have to abstain from alcohol, follow a diet, and I think take a picture of your progress, something like that. But the point is it's more of a mental challenge than a physical one. And what I've found, I think I'm on day 22 right now with the group, is the camaraderie of sending the photos becomes kind of like a rhythm. And I suspect that even when we're done with our 75 days, we'll probably keep that same text train. And it's become ingrained because going back to that 30 to 45 days, it becomes part of your habit.
Mark Williams [00:22:26]:
The first couple weeks you're modifying your behavior quite a bit, and I imagine after 30 to 45 days it's going to sort of set a pattern and you can sort of see how much easier it is to put on. And so anyway, as we kind of come into the end of this year and look at next year, I think it's important to to take a look at our habits, to take a look at our time management and maybe write out the list of things that are the most important for you personally and your business, and then find a way to prioritize them and time block around them. Hopefully this episode was helpful. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can tune into the Curious Builder on Mondays and Thursdays. Thanks for listening thanks for listening to the Curious Builder podcast. If you like what you listen to, please give us a five star rating and write us a review. It really means a lot. It's a great way for us to just understand what you like about the podcast and what we can keep doing.
Mark Williams [00:23:14]:
So like and review and please share with your friends and family. Find out more@curiousbuilderpodcast.com.
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