I was raised on an Army Post, we army kids are affectionately known as Army Brats. It wasn’t an easy life. Money was always tight and we moved every two years or so. As a child I thought everyone wore green and carried a gun for a living. I believed that picnics were spent watching our fathers jump out of planes and crawling around tanks. I don’t remember any prejudices when I was growing up. There wasn’t a big distinction between the white kids, black kids, Mexican kids ect. Perhaps it was because our lives were so similar and all of our houses looked the same. The style of our furnishings depended on the last post you had been stationed at. The biggest distinction between us kids were the non-coms and the officer brats. Now that’s where the battle was. Nothing serious mind you but there was some diffident tension there. As I look back at that time as difficult as it was at times I am grateful for it. I learned to be flexible. I learned to not be afraid of change and to have the ability to face life head on. I believe these are some of the most essential qualities one needs if they are going to choose to be an Entrepreneur.

I own a Construction Company. Specifically I am a Drywall Contractor. I have been in construction since college. 25 years to be exact. I started at the bottom per-say. A laborer scraping out house’s, in layman’s terms it means I had to pick up the trash and throw it away. I worked for my husband in his drywall company, I’ve worked for a cable company laying cable, and as a Swimming Pool Contractor. Now please understand I didn’t stay a laborer at the first opportunity I moved myself into the office to learn the finer points, if you want to call it that, of the construction industry. In 1999 I started my own drywall contracting company and so Excel Drywall Inc. was born.

Being a woman in the Drywall Business was….. well let’s just say being a army brat didn’t hurt. My step father was a staff sergeant and there are some who would say I inherited some of his better qualities, if you get what I mean. But seriously it was challenging. I am not the kind of person to hide in the office and honestly even if I was I didn’t have the money to do it. I ran the company from the ground up. Meaning I was back to scraping out house’s, to the horror of my employee’s. I ran my jobs, did my own estimating, the accounting and delivering material, oh and I have some stories about that. The point that I am trying to make here is that if you want to own your own company and be successful at it you have to do everything, know every aspect of your company. Of course you don’t stay there because you can’t. As your company becomes more successful your time will be spent marketing, networking, and running the day to day operations. I can tell you that some of my fondest memories I have, are the first year I started Excel Drywall, it was a hoot……