….and incoming chair of the Women’s Council. That’s Nicole Goolsby of Rion Homes, who has done an admirable job of juggling the role of single parent and successful builder.

People join Women’s Council for many reasons—to make contacts, to further professional careers in homebuilding, to form mutually beneficial relationships with other parties in the industry. But for Nicole Goolsby, belonging to the group—and for 2006 serving as its chairperson—serves another valuable purpose, one that has sustained her during difficult and challenging times:

“One huge advantage to council involvement is that you gain perspective on balancing your life—you learn how be a mother, which never takes second fiddle, and a business woman at the same time,” Goolsby explains.

 For a single mother of three children ranging in age from 7 to 16, that balance is often the center of daily life, and Goolsby says there is no better source for learning tips than from other women doing the same thing.

 “When you’re a woman in a male-dominated industry, you find yourself at a lot of meetings with mostly guys—and I can tell you they aren’t discussing carpooling or helping out at the school,” she adds with a chuckle.  

 

Goolsby the businesswoman

Goolsby’s company, Rion Homes, has seen a few major changes since she was interviewed in 2002 for Building Women’s predecessor publication—the newsletter NetWorker.

 As that article explained, she started her company in 2000, relying on knowledge she received in several previous positions related to homes and real estate. By the time the newsletter interviewed her, she was building custom and spec homes in the $250,000 to $300,000 range— about three homes per year in Charlotte’s outlying counties that surround Lake Norman, NC. Today, the company is licensed in that state to build homes in the $300,000 to $750,000 range, and she is building many of the larger homes on the lake’s prime waterfront properties. She builds about five homes a year and has also started a remodeling arm.

 The remodeling business enabled her to take a significant step forward this year—she hired her first full-time employee in September.

 “I put off hiring someone full time for a long time because I didn’t need to be a large company. Life is full of the unexpected, though, and it’s at the point where we’ve grown enough that I need someone to help me keep it organized and become more efficient,” she says.

 Because remodeling jobs are smaller, but more frequent, the move into that field allows her the assurance she’ll have the cash flow “to pay someone every month,” she explains.

 Now that she’s found what she calls “the perfect person,” however, she’s delighted with the possibility “of having an extra me. On one hand, it is challenging because I have all this energy, and I’m not used to being able to hand tasks off to someone else. But I hired her to make me more efficient, and her promise to me is that we’re going to be three times more effective together,” she says.

 Where did she find her miracle worker? The Women’s Council, of course. Her new employee, Tracie Faircloth, is the local president of the Lake Norman Women’s Council and Nicole was able to hire her away from another custom builder.
 The business of remodeling has also presented Goolsby with a new set of challenges, because pricing is very different than with the new home business and because scheduling is critical to success.

 “With residential construction, there is some flexibility in who does what and when. But with remodeling, you sometimes don’t know what you need until you get behind the walls. Then things need to happen in a certain order. If a subcontractor doesn’t show up on a particular day, it can mess up the entire schedule for the project,” she explains.

 However, that challenge is also why she likes the business.

 “I love the intensive focus you have to have—of getting the right people in there when they are needed,” she says.
 The key to success is to develop ongoing relationships with good subcontractors, she says, another aspect of her life that has benefited from being active in the council and home builder associations.

 “The best place to find people is the regular monthly meeting of my associations—I’m always meeting new people and filing their names away. Especially with remodeling, you have to have different crews available for different situations,” she explains.

Goolsby as mom

As her enthusiasm about her new assistant illustrates, Goolsby is feeling optimistic that life is about to get a bit easier—both for her and for her family.

 The first two years she was single were tough—she had three different children in three different schools while trying to run a growing business and running a household alone.

 However, the situation has calmed considerably in the last year, and a second recent development at home has also contributed to a smoother schedule—she bought her 16 year-old a car.

 “I spend a lot more time these days praying, but having a son who can drive has changed my life,” she says with a laugh.
 Having struggled through the tough times, Goolsby feels she and her family are stronger and, “we’re all feeling more like we have a normal life.”

 At least as normal as a family that stays as busy as hers can be. All of her children—from son William, who is a drum major, sax player, guitar enthusiast and aspiring mechanical engineer to 14-yea-old Ellyn, who plays the flute and sings in a touring choir, to Devon, who at 7 years old is already singing at church and taking piano lessons—are following in Nicole’s footsteps both in terms of how busy they are and how musically inclined.

 “I have many interests, and I’ve encouraged my children to be the same. They know that life can’t be all about them and their schedules, but it can’t be all about my work either,” she says.

 The best lesson she’s learned about being a mom and business woman is that “It’s a given that it will always be a juggling act. You have to learn to take moments to focus on the big picture and really honestly critique the balance you have in your life,” she says.

 The next step in the process is one she’s starting to look at now that her children are older and the business more settled.
 “Somewhere in that process, there has to be something that is just for me. I’m not real good at that yet, but at least I know I need to be,” she says.

 Like her children, one of her pursuits has always been music: “Music is what feeds my soul,” she says. She pursues it these days mostly through her church, where she sings, rings handbells and helps with children musical productions.
 But she’s also hoping to travel for fun—to places that will be away from both her children and her “pseudo-children,” as she affectionately calls her subcontractors.

 “Nextel (the phone service that allows access to most places in the U.S. and Canada) can be a very good thing for business but a very bad thing for relaxing,” she says.

Goolsby as leader

 When asked who her mentors in life have been, Goolsby will not point to one person or even one gender—she says her teachers in life have been numerous and widespread.

 They start as far back as her mother’s generation, to the rare women of that era that both created a family and worked, and to the women who overcame obstacles such as divorce and loss of a loved one.

 They move forward to some of the people who hired her along the way, including her last employer, a developer who encouraged her to take the initiative and absorb as much of the construction business as she could. And, as with many aspects of Nicole Goolsby’s career, her inspiration also has come from her involvement with the Women’s’ Councils and home builder associations, a source of relationships that have given guidance on her career, her climb within the associations and her family life.

 “I have met some amazing women in Women’s Council who are both mentor and friend. Some have given me guidance on steps to grow as a leader. Others have just been there to support me when I needed it—to show me how they run their families and their businesses.”

 These days, she is also serving as mentor to others.

 “It’s great to be able to give back to the industry, your association and your peers, because you learn more from those relationships than you ever can sitting in a class,” she says.

 Her passion for the homebuilding industry and her desire to grow within it go as far back as her childhood. In the article written three years ago for the women’s council newsletter, Goolsby is quoted as saying how at 10 years old, she loved sitting in the rafters of a house being built—inspired by the scent of construction.

 What she says this year in follow up to that quote could also be applied to her upcoming term as chair of a council that has grown rapidly during the ensuing three years.

 “I still love being there when a house is being framed,” she says. “I love looking at the skeleton and imagining what is coming next.”

Genilee Swope Parente is a freelance writer/editor based in Dumfries, VA, and a regular contributor to Building Women magazine. Reach her at .

Material shortages and other bad dreams

Nicole Goolsby says materials shortages and escalating prices in her neck of the woods have contributed to recent changes in the construction industry, including a trend she sees happening across the country: the nightmare customer.

 “Until the last 18 months, I never had to wait on something to come in,” Goolsby explains. “Now if a customer chooses a particular color of shingle, it may take us six weeks or more to get them in, which holds up building,” she adds.

 Unlike in certain areas of the nation, her company never felt a long-term crunch from the cement shortage; however, lumber prices have been “volatile,” she says. The result is that she and other builders have to build the possibility of price increases into building contracts. The situation has also contributed to her first customer who simply refused to pay, a situation that ended with filing a lawsuit.

 However, she considers herself lucky that she’s only had to deal with only one such customer as she’s talked with other builders enough to find out that the nightmare customer is a national trend. And while material shortages have triggered some of the situations, “it’s really a combination of surprise extra costs and a part of society that wants to get something for nothing,” she says.

 While she sees no improvement in volatile prices for 2005, she says the situation should not be as tricky “because we’re now expecting an unpredictable situation. NAHB has published and recommended an escalation cause for contracts, and most builders are including such a clause in their contracts,” she says.