Meet Sam Williamson
Sam Williamson was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. He graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1991 and has spent the three decades since building things — in commercial real estate, in entertainment, and now at the intersection of both.
His CRE career spans 25 years and three distinct chapters. He began as a Construction Project Manager at Trammell Crow Company, where he managed Sprint’s western U.S. portfolio across six states from a base in Torrance, California. He went on to found WorkSpace Construction and serve as Director of Project Management Services at Spire Realty Group, overseeing a 6 million square foot multi-market Texas portfolio. At Site Selection Group he served as SVP and built the project management division from scratch.
In 2019 Sam made headlines when he trained to walk 100 consecutive miles to raise $100,000 for veterans and first responders. He made it to mile 60 before landing in the hospital. He considers it one of the better things he’s ever done.
Entertainment has run alongside CRE for thirty years. Sam was represented early by William Morris and is currently represented by Mary Collins Agency, with three decades of voiceover and on-camera work. In 2021 he founded MollyLlama Studios LLC, the parent company for a Texas-anchored slate of film and IP that includes the feature DEADLAND (SXSW 2023, streaming on Amazon Prime), Borderline, Tequila Mule, Before We Were Found, and the long-running conversation series As The World Works. Highway 118™ is the studio's production banner. Texas Founded. Texas Funded. Texas Filmed.® is a federally registered trademark and certification platform for the Texas film economy.
He is married to Molly — the namesake of MollyLlama Studios. He has two daughters: Alex, married to Ben, a physician completing his fellowship in endocrinology, and Abby, who lives in Austin. And a dog named Kitty and a son named Max who keeps everyone honest.
Q&A with Sam
Why did you start As The World Works?
Initially, I wanted to create an informal platform to have candid conversations with experts in the commercial real estate world - friends and colleagues who have been instrumental in my 20 plus years of growth and understanding of how the world works in this arena. I wanted to showcase something valuable, especially to those like my younger self, to help inform, inspire, and literally connect with our guests (each one provides a link and often an email or cell phone, making it easy to reach out).
As the conversations evolved, I realized there’s a bigger picture going on here, inclusive of CRE, and also other professionals, consultants, coaches, etc. that have the experience and wisdom from their own experience in shaping the space we work and live in.
What are you hoping to get out of it?
To me, there’s nothing more fulfilling than connecting people. My two primary career paths, construction/development and voiceover/acting have run parallel to each other for almost 30 years. Along the way, I’ve met some amazing people with amazing ideas that need to be shared with the world.
Who was it created for?
Admittedly, I originally created it for me. I was having some video conversations during the pandemic lockdown and recording them so that I could have a visual way of reminding myself of the golden nuggets of information that came out of these collaborative interactions. And then it hit me; why not make it a video podcast for someone out there who might be looking for some direction or information that may spark something in their own journey. WorkSpace is the name of my commercial construction company so it made sense to start with the thing and people I know best. As things got rolling, it naturally began to expand into broader territories that impact us and the environments in which we work.
What topics do you plan to cover? Is there anything that’s off limits?
Imagine fireside chats with business professionals in every field who influence our external and internal spaces. By external, I mean where we work. For example, at the office, working from home, working from a Starbucks - maybe even working from our car. And internal, that’s the soft skills like psychological mindset, personal growth, morale, creativity, or anything else that impacts our well-being and way of being.
Is there anything that’s off-limits? Good question. Politics and religion are definitely off limits.
What can we expect in the future?
A lot of fun with some very cool folks.
If you were going to give someone a single piece of advice for living a more fulfilled life, what would it be?
In the words of Lynyrd Skynard “... be a simple kind of man..be something you love and understand” I love the word “be” vs do. The do part follows who you are being.
As The World Works is dedicated to my mom, Sarah Lee, the most gracious, kindest person in the world. She impacted so many people with her smile and encouragement, regardless of how they are, where they came from, and what they aspired to do. She taught me to sing, dance, follow my dreams, and just be “Sam” no matter what form “Sam” actually took.
She believed in me, whatever path I chose.