After the United States Air Force placed her in a not-so-thrilling career field, Kim Farlin actively sought other nontraditional career options for women in the military, and was one of the first women to be accepted into the Carpentry Training Class at Sheppard Air Force Base. As a female forerunner in the carpentry industry and as this year’s president of the National Association of Women Business Owners, Farlin’s voice as a woman business owner has reached many others, including top women entrepreneurs and young women considering a nontraditional career choice such as hers. She’s become a mentor to many, and her volunteer track record speaks for itself.
Tell about your background, schools attended, family, etc.
I grew up in Pekin, graduating from Pekin High School. I’m the oldest of eight siblings of a blended family. My mother was a homemaker, was later employed by the Community Workshop and Training Center, then in the business offices of OSF. My father was a full-time farmer for the first 10 years of my life, mostly farming all of the land around the Powerton plant, which is now Powerton Lake. He later worked as a full-time Caterpillar employee and farmed part-time. The first seven years of my life were spent on a farm with no indoor plumbing; that meant water was a precious commodity—hauling it into the house for cooking, cleaning, sponge baths, and hand-washing the clothes. When we later moved to a farmhouse with indoor plumbing, the modern conveniences of plumbing mesmerized my siblings and me. We wanted to keep flushing the commode or turning on the outside pump faucet, just to watch the water flow. I have one daughter, Amelia, who attends Mossville School.
Tell about your business, Ms. Fixit (number of employees, location, when it began, etc.)
I began Ms. Fixit, a home repair and remodeling business, in January 2001. My office is currently located in Dunlap, and I have three employees besides myself, including a part-time office manager. The business focuses on carpentry and ceramic tile. Ms. Fixit is a company that wants to make homes a nice comfort zone in which people can reside. I tell prospective customers that carpentry entails all there is to building a house—except the plumbing, electrical, concrete, heating, and cooling—and that Ms. Fixit either fixes or replaces what’s needed.
What made you decide to go into this nontraditional field? How much experience did you have in home repair when you began Ms. Fixit?
When I joined the United States Air Force (USAF) in 1973, the military was just starting its program to place women into nontraditional career fields. I happened to ask if there was anything I could volunteer for—as I didn’t particularly care for the career choice the USAF had made for me—and was subsequently interviewed and asked if I was interested in any of the construction fields in the military. Upon remembering my great uncle who was a carpenter, I made carpentry my career choice. After completing basic training, I was told I was accepted into the carpentry school, and that I’d go through eight weeks of training. Little did I know I’d be one of the first women to attend the USAF Carpentry Training Class at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, and one of the women to set the stage for all future women of the Air Force to enter into the civil engineering and airplane/vehicle maintenance career fields. The first day I arrived for carpentry school, the sergeant in charge thought someone was playing a joke on him. Glancing back at the roster, he soon realized that “F” under sex meant “female,” and the news spread fast around the base.
After leaving the USAF, I decided to work for a property management company to do carpentry repairs at its apartment properties. Soon I was sent to training schools to learn repairs in electrical, plumbing, HVAC, appliances, and swimming pools. I worked for two of the largest property management companies in Atlanta, and became the only woman to work in property maintenance in Atlanta.
I finally ended my career in property maintenance when I became supervisor of a crew of men for a large apartment complex. There are properties within Atlanta that have over 1,300 apartments, and those large properties require a great team of property maintenance personnel. As a property maintenance supervisor, the maintenance staff under my direction received several awards for calls completed on time and least amount of callbacks.
Tiring of the travel between Georgia and Illinois to visit family, I moved back to central Illinois in 1990. I worked for a couple of companies when I first arrived, but after a time I wanted to realize the American dream of running my own company.
Who’s had the greatest influence in your decision to begin your business? Do you have a mentor?
The people closest to me had the biggest influence in deciding to begin my own business—they knew my work, my strengths, and my work ethics. My family and friends reminded me that one only goes through life once and the opportunity was out there. So I jumped off the deep end, quitting a secure job, and leaped into the pool of self-employment, which isn’t for the weak minded and ill prepared.
I didn’t have any mentors to begin with, but I remembered lessons taught from mentors years ago. My mother was one of the first women truck drivers for the Community Workshop and Training Center in the late ’60s. She has shown me what it takes to be strong and have the ability to do almost anything you set your mind to. A good education coupled with common sense and backbone can take one far. My intuition has been one of my best guides as well. One supervisor told me, “If you get an uncomfortable feeling about a situation or a person, then it’s probably not a good idea to stick around that person or situation.”
I was also taught from the beginning in carpentry school and at the carpentry shop I worked at in the Air Force that nobody leaves the jobsite until the mess is cleaned up, even if we’re returning to work on the same project the next day. Clean jobsites have remained my mantra as long as I’ve been in business.
I’ve had the opportunity to find the people who could help counsel me in my construction and business affairs. My construction mentors include two men I’ve worked closely with in the Peoria chapter of Habitat for Humanity: Don Baker, a long-time volunteer with Habitat; and Mike Trent, the Habitat construction coordinator. My business mentors come from being part of the Central Illinois Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO): Jeanne Buysee, who owns Jeanne Buysee Insurance Agency; and Diana Hall, who owns Bard Optical. Listening and watching both of these successful businesswomen has made me a better business owner.
What, if any, discrimination have you encountered as a woman-owned construction/repair company? Do you ever feel you have to work harder than a man would to prove your abilities?
The only discrimination I may have encountered was the lack of referrals from reputable construction companies or other construction fields, such as plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc. While I made note of some of the best companies in the construction industry in order to send them referrals of work I couldn’t or wouldn’t undertake, I wasn’t getting referrals sent back to me. I attribute some of this to my lack of longevity in the business at first, and the necessity to make my mark and stay in business. I didn’t expect to get all of the business as a woman in the carpentry field, but I sure wanted some. So I was determined to make it known I was here to stay.
I might’ve had to work harder in some instances, but I also had to work smarter. Five years later, I’m getting more respect from other companies within the construction industry. There will always be those who won’t do business with a woman in many of the nontraditional career fields. One has to remember there were no women realtors, insurance agents, corporate officers, and many other career fields just about 35 years ago. Some people are still getting used to the idea, and some people will never accept it.
What are some unique home-repair jobs that have been requested by your clients?
Some of the unique home repair jobs that the company has completed have had to do with making living spaces better than the original architects had planned. The projects range from opening up an area in a kitchen at the sink so the homeowner could look through the dining room out to the exterior view of her home and not feel boxed in, to opening up an area of dead space behind an upstairs bathroom to enlarge the room and allow for a bigger bathtub and custom built-in cabinetry. We’ve also installed, upon request, birdhouses on posts, used antique doors as decorative windbreakers at a front door, and beautifully framed artwork.
What has surprised you most about being a business owner? About working in your field?
There’s a lot of paperwork involved as part of the everyday job of running a business, and there’s a lot of knowledge required concerning employment issues, environmental issues, construction issues, and energy issues. Not a surprise, but important advice to remember is that the most important people in any business are customers and good employees. If you don’t have either one of these, your business will be lacking what it needs to succeed.
When it comes to working in the carpentry industry, I’ve learned from the beginning to talk about what I know. The guys find out right away that I know more than the average woman or man when it comes to construction. Long ago, one of the many men I’ve had the opportunity to work with told me, “We thought we were going to have to carry your tools for you when the company told us a woman was going to start working with us, but on that first day you walked into the shop carrying your own.”
That’s how I’ve always approached my job—I’m here to do the job I was hired to do. It still surprises me when I show up on a jobsite and men are taken aback to see that a woman’s going to do the job. I set out to put forth my best attitude and make the jobsite a good place to be. After all, I’m going to be working around these guys for awhile, so they might as well get used to the fact that I enjoy my work and am happy to be doing what I want to do. For this reason, I’ve gained many great friendships with so many good men and women in the construction industry.
You’re currently president of the central Illinois chapter of NAWBO. What’s important about belonging to an organization such as this?
I’ve been a member of the NAWBO-CIL since April 2002. This organization has helped me build a professional network that has educated me on business issues; has helped me make new friends; has taught me life isn’t all about work, but relaxation and fun as well; has taught me about public policy (influencing those legislators who make the laws that affect our businesses); has gotten me to think outside of the box; and has encouraged me to venture outside of Illinois to attend conferences held annually in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere throughout the United States.
I’m passionate about NAWBO and all it stands for. If there are women business owners who aren’t part of this organization, they may be missing out on some of the best mentoring one can find. This chapter is now in its 27th year, and it’s thriving and growing. As the third-oldest out of over 80 chapters throughout the U.S., this chapter is currently one of the fastest growing in the Midwest.
When I became a member of NAWBO-CIL, I jumped in enthusiastically because this was the group I needed to be a part of as a woman business owner. I’m in an industry that abounds with men, so this group has been a great asset to me and my company in seeking answers to questions affecting women business owners, or business owners in general. Since becoming a member, I’ve been awarded Rookie of the Year, Unsung Hero, and Team Builder awards. These awards send a message concerning my involvement and passion for the NAWBO organization.
Please explain NAWBO’s mission. What are your goals for the organization this year?
NAWBO’s vision is to “propel women entrepreneurs into economic, social, and political spheres of power worldwide.” This is an organization whose mission is to “strengthen the wealth-creating capacity of our members and promote economic development; create innovative and effective changes in the business culture; build strategic alliances, coalitions, and affiliations; and transform public policy and influence opinion makers.”
Some of my goals for the central Illinois NAWBO chapter are to encourage members to attend the Statewide NAWBO Public Policy event in Springfield, and/or the National Public Policy event in Washington, D.C., and/or the National NAWBO conference to be held in Atlanta in June 2007; to keep members informed via e-mails, the chapter newsletter, the chapter web site, and announcements at meetings; to continue growing and retaining membership; and to get the word out about NAWBO.
How would you encourage other women to go into nontraditional career fields?
Throughout the years, I’ve had the opportunity to speak to groups that have included young women from middle school on through high school. Young women who have the courage to enter a field mostly populated with men need to know that construction work is hard, there will always be work in that industry. The construction job can’t be shipped overseas, but it can be undermined by low wage paying employers. There will be good days and bad days—as with any job. Always try to listen and follow the men and women who give advice and not a bunch of bull, trust in your heart and instincts to do the right thing, and don’t take disrespect from anybody. You’ll be able to stand back and look at your work and say, “I did that, and I’ve made someone’s life better for it.”
Do you have hobbies or time for hobbies after work?
In my spare time, I enjoy fishing, playing golf, playing video games, reading (almost always before I go to sleep at night), and spending time with my family and friends. I also enjoy going to local art fairs and theatrical performances.
Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about Ms. Fixit or NAWBO?
I’ve volunteered with the Peoria Chapter of Habitat for Humanity for the past four years, working on the first Blitz Build in 2004 and working on all three of the WomenBuild projects in the central Illinois area. This past year, I also received an award from Illinois State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka as part of the “Woman to Woman: Making a Difference” annual awards in the category of Nontraditional Careers. I’ve also spoken at two of the Women in Construction seminars for high school girls held biannually by the Peoria Educational Region for Employment and Career Training (P.E.R.F.E.C.T.) and the Tri-County Construction Labor-Management Council (TRICON).
I continue to remind students that a college education isn’t the only avenue to explore for a good-paying job. The construction industry needs new apprentices in the trades every year. There will always be a need for the construction of roads, housing, and buildings. TPW