How Women Can Succeed as General Contractors in Real Estate

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (00:00)
I think it’s just a patriarchal society. ⁓ And it’s what we’ve seen traditionally. And I’m in these spaces and I see the attitude and the response to women speaking up or lending their expertise, they get attacked. So it can feel very isolating. And if you don’t have that inner strength or confidence, you immediately, you just wanna fight. Cause it’s a lot to have like,

100 men jumping down your back and telling you what you don’t know. It’s a scary space to be in but Yeah, so, you know confidence is just half the battle

Cody Crabb (00:31)
Yeah, no kidding. Yeah.

Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Cody Crabb with Investor Fuel. Today I’m joined by Tiffany Brown, who is the owner and operator of Boss Build Her based in Tulsa and expanding across Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas area.

Tiffany teaches women how to become general contractors even if they’ve never swung a hammer in their life. And today we’re gonna get into how she built that mission, why there are no real actual rules for getting started, and how women can use the skills they already have to level up financially and in real estate and construction. Tiffany, thank you so much for joining us today.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (02:42)
Thank you for having me, I’m excited.

Cody Crabb (02:45)
Yeah, so just to get started here, I’d love to hear the superhero origin story. Were you bitten by a radioactive general contractor or was this something else that happened to get you started?

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (02:57)
Little bit of both. ⁓ you know, life, life happens. ⁓ And I’ll say four years ago, about four or five years ago, I moved from California to Tulsa, Oklahoma with my husband. We had our four kids. had a six month old in tow. It was a big move. I was working remotely. I was working remotely. I got accepted into a program called Tulsa Remote. And that’s ultimately what attracted us here. It was during COVID, we were looking for a change. And so I bought my remote job here.

Cody Crabb (03:15)
Yeah.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (03:27)
And my husband, he had sold his license. He had a dispensary in California and he sold the license to some investors that would just take over the business. So he wouldn’t be actively working. So he could move. so, you know, moving is expensive and you start to go through money quickly when you’re, you know, we just bought a house, we were decorating, getting the kids settled in sports. Like the money was, it was going quickly.

And so it got to a point where we were like, okay, we gotta come up with a plan to create a two income household because we cannot rely on mine. I’m pregnant. We’re about to have more expenses. And so also at this time, I was pregnant with baby number two. So I came with a six month old and we had the got settled in and then shortly after getting the toast, I got pregnant again, just being in the house, guess, I don’t know, but life was life in and we were like, okay,

Another baby coming, we gotta make something happen. And so my husband and I, we sat down, we got serious. We were like, okay, we gotta put our heads together. We gotta make some income. I was like, okay, well, what can you do? And he said, well, know, I can fix stuff. And it didn’t really register to me what that meant because, you know, we dated for two years before we got married, but I never really saw him fix anything. I knew like he was handy. And I’d heard like little stories here and there about him going to like trade school or like carpentry, but that was not his life at all.

Cody Crabb (04:45)
you

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (04:53)
when I was with him. you know, I was like, okay, you can fix stuff. Well, I have a background in marketing. That’s what I’ve been doing since like, for 10 years now. I’ve started small businesses. had a small entertainment business. I was running in the Bay Area when I was there was family and kid focused.

So I knew how I knew how to find customers and like high end customers. I was working in Silicon Valley. So my level of professionalism super high and

I just knew how to like get companies off the ground. And so it’s like, okay, well, I can do internet marketing. I can do sales. I’m great at customer service. Let’s combine this and like, let’s make something happen. And so it started off with me just like posting him online on like the gig economy kind of jobs, like for him, like the little fix it stuff, like hanging up pictures and hanging up ⁓ just like little paint jobs, little drywall patching jobs, like really small things. And ⁓

Cody Crabb (06:18)
Hmm.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (06:38)
My husband’s terrible at marketing. So I was like urging him like, please take your tripod, take your camera, please record what you’re doing so that I can document and I can get more jobs. So from there, the trust factor just increased. And as we got more and more trust with Clientel, the local ⁓ market, we just started getting bigger and bigger requests. so neither, both of us really like money. That’s what we have in common.

Cody Crabb (07:04)
Sure, sure, yeah.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (07:06)
And so if someone asks us, know, can you do, can you remodel my bathroom? Even though we both had no experience, like we’re not going to turn down $15,000, $20,000. Like we’re going to figure it out. And so that’s what we did. Like we just kept figuring it out. And so for the past four years, we’ve just been figuring it out. And it’s, yeah, it’s gone from like really small things to like massive.

Cody Crabb (07:19)
You figured it out, yeah.

That’s, wow, that’s amazing.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (07:35)
Wood rot mode foundation like 75 000 100 000 exterior remodels windows doors siding like and we’ve just been figuring it out

Cody Crabb (07:46)
That’s

actually so awesome. So I love when people share stories like this, because anybody can hear a story about someone, their parents left them a bunch of money, they bought a property, but hearing about someone like this that’s like, how are we gonna do this, and just made a career out of thin air, that’s awesome. So question one here, so do you have any contractor experience, or is your role the, you’re like the marketing person, or how does this work exactly?

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (08:04)
This

Cody Crabb (08:14)
⁓ Like I mentioned in the intro, your business is focused toward women, is that right?

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (08:19)
So.

Cody Crabb (08:20)
So

what role do you play kind of day to day in the business?

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (08:27)
Well, I’ll just say this, if it wasn’t for me, we wouldn’t have any customers because my husband would not be able to find clients. And one of the things I see, I’m in all these contractor communities and like so many people have the skills, but they do not know how to find the work. Like that’s the biggest obstacle. So I always tell people like the biggest obstacle is like finding the jobs, marketing and selling them and knowing your worth and being able to command your value.

Cody Crabb (08:31)
You

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (08:57)
So every day I’m out there marketing, ⁓ screening, making sure people pre-qualify for jobs, explaining the process and the scope of work so they know what we’re doing. And a lot of like, I had no experience at all with any of this, but a lot of it just came from like being on site, watching, asking questions, studying. If we would get a job, like I would sit there.

with my husband and be watching like YouTube tutorials. So I understand exactly what needs to be done and so that I can plan out the day with him. So it’s not like he’s just doing it alone. Like I’m there with him.

Cody Crabb (09:29)
Yeah, yeah.

how did you get from there to building this Boss Build Her community and kind of what’s that about?

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (09:38)
Yeah, since it’s my job to find subcontractors, know, like just going out and explaining the jobs, like I saw that like the pool of women is so small. It’s either small or non-existent, depending on like what trade it is. And so I just got really frustrated. I’m like, this is unfair because this stuff is not rocket science and women can learn like taping and mudding drywall is not rocket science. It’s just

Cody Crabb (10:07)
Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of it isn’t even particularly like heavy lifting type stuff. This is like anybody could do this, you’re right.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (10:08)
Hands-on practice, you know what I mean and

Yeah, so I just don’t think it’s fair that men have the opportunity to suck at this and women don’t. Men can lose their job, jump in a truck, slap a sticker on their truck and say, I’m a contractor because they have the confidence to do that. And even if they don’t know anything about what they’re doing, I feel like women should have that opportunity too. And it’s not hard to figure out and they’d be really good at it if they just gave it a shot. ⁓

Cody Crabb (11:00)
Yeah.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (11:20)
About a couple years ago, my husband and I, went through a program that Tulsa offered. was called Builders and Backers. And so they would let you test out an idea and they would give you $5,000 to test your idea. That’s one of the great things about being in Tulsa that I love is like, they really were incentivizing people to stay. So they’ve given us a lot of opportunities. And so my idea was to test out teaching women’s trades.

So with the money that they gave me, I rented a warehouse space. My husband built out ⁓ a house frame, like a really small house frame. And the idea was to teach them how to install windows, how to install doors, how to do flooring, how to ⁓ fix drywall. ⁓ So we did one class where we had the drywall up. We showed them how to install it. They would go punch holes. And then we gave them the tools and showed them how to patch it up and all that. And so

It was just really empowering seeing them like, my God, like this is actually not even that hard. I don’t even know why I, you know, never tried this stuff, but like now I do, like, I just feel so empowered. So like, I got a lot of gratification just seeing women become empowered and just like watching in real time, like them figure it out and like open their eyes. And so ⁓ just trying to scale that didn’t work because of the cost of renting the warehouse space and

Cody Crabb (12:43)
Sure,

yeah.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (12:44)
Our market is just so small that like it’s hard to have a consistent flow. We’re in like a small town, everything’s so spread out. And so I was like, I don’t want to give up on this idea because I still want women to be empowered in home repairs and trades and sales. I was like, well, let me think backwards. Like most men that have construction companies, they’re trying to get off the tools. And that’s the hardest part is like, they just want to focus on the business.

And so I was like, okay, well, if I just put women in a position to focus on the business first, then they’ll just automatically like level up financially. They’ll make so much more money than if they were to start backwards learning a skill. Cause the skills really not necessary. can sub out the skills. So that’s how boss filter.

Cody Crabb (13:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s true, yeah. You don’t

even necessarily have to do the actual work, true. That’s a good point.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (13:33)
How

many roofers do you see actually like roof company owners doing the roofing work? They don’t.

Cody Crabb (13:37)
Yeah,

exactly. Yeah, I mean that’s a really good point and that I mean that is a perfect example of like Wait a second like so nobody’s kind of stopped to just wait say hey wait ⁓ Why are we doing it that way? Like what what’s the what’s reason? So I love when people can kind of pause for a minute and be like maybe you should just think about Why we’re doing it this way Maybe there’s a better way. There’s a line that you said this really interesting, which is like men are allowed to be bad and

and women don’t feel like they’re even allowed to try because they have to already be good. I mean, I think I already know the answer, but I’d be curious to hear what you’d say too. Like, why do you think that confidence gap exists in the first place?

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (14:19)
I think it’s just a patriarchal society. ⁓ And it’s what we’ve seen traditionally. And I’m in these spaces and I see the attitude and the response to women speaking up or lending their expertise, they get attacked. So it can feel very isolating. And if you don’t have that inner strength or confidence, you immediately, you just wanna fight. Cause it’s a lot to have like,

100 men jumping down your back and telling you what you don’t know. It’s a scary space to be in but Yeah, so, you know confidence is just half the battle like That’s it that’s what it is

Cody Crabb (14:51)
Yeah, no kidding. Yeah.

Yeah, well and

and this is like it’s it’s so true I mean even just in my experience, which you wouldn’t think I would have any but my wife like she’s so much more handy than I am and So we have people come to fix stuff or whatever and they’re like trying to talk to me about stuff ignoring Whatever she’s saying and I’m like, you trust me? You do not you do not want my opinion on this I don’t know but that’s that’s a perfect example like I don’t know what I’m talking about, but they just automatically navigate to me so and I think

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (15:21)
haha

Cody Crabb (15:28)
Also too, I’ve heard lot of people, women investors talk about things like they wish they could just hire women, that they’re not necessarily the most comfortable having only dudes coming in and out of their house constantly. So on many, levels, this is so, I think, ⁓ important and such a good idea. ⁓ So ⁓ you start running this program, so what did it scale to and where is it at today?

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (16:38)
We’re in the beginning phase. I’m in customer discovery. I’ve worked with a couple of women who I find that are just stuck within themselves and like they have things they want to do, but for some reason they just can’t get past that point of like launching. So I’m finding that a lot of what I do is just talking them through seeing where they want to be.

or helping them see the potential in what they can be and letting, helping them see that it’s not as complicated as they’re making it. And so.

Cody Crabb (17:16)
Okay,

so who’s an ideal person that should reach out to you? So you said you kind of, this is a, what sort of area, what sort of person should you be to get kind of involved ⁓ in this course if this is calling out to you?

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (17:33)
Well, would say first research the general contractor laws in your area because they vary widely based on where you are. So for me, the lowest barrier of entry for the United States is Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas. There are no laws or licenses requiring you to have a license for being a general contractor.

Cody Crabb (17:59)
You’re

kidding, I did not know that.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (18:02)
Yeah, it’s very, very unregulated. And that’s why there’s so much room because lots of scammers, lots of people stealing deposits, lots of people starting jobs and not finishing them. Like if you just come into this industry with honesty and integrity and professionalism and good communication and like empathy and compassion, like so many of just follow up and execute like it’s.

Cody Crabb (18:21)
You just do what you say sounds like. Yeah. Yeah.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (18:28)
You literally can thrive you can make so much money and like your brand will stand out, you know, and I those are the things that women have just kind of I was naturally not all women but a lot of us just naturally have we know how to listen and like We’re like not aggressive in our responses. Like if someone tells us, you know, like we’re just willing to listen or like negotiate so ⁓ yeah, I would say those

Cody Crabb (18:51)
Yeah, so

that makes me curious then, sorry to interrupt there, but just out of curiosity while we’re on that, what skills do you see in women that do this, that come in handy extra well? Because I can imagine it’s not necessarily the same exact skills that the men would have.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (19:12)
I’ll say the biggest one, is very like, you would never think, just the ability to listen, to just sit there and listen. ⁓ My husband, for example, he is so short-patients. Like if something is not, if it’s not about money or like the actual job, he’s like zoning out and he’s ready to get out the house immediately. But like a lot of people, the ideal clients with money to actually spend, they’re not like gonna be like,

They just want to talk about their problems and their story and why they’re doing this You know, like they got a son that’s graduating from college and he’s coming back home and he studied ⁓ Math for ten years and he was an excellent soccer player like they want to talk So like literally just sitting there listening on the phone or in person for 45 minutes to an hour and a half Could literally win you the sale

Cody Crabb (19:58)
You

Totally, yeah,

But I could really see someone, because a lot of hiring a contractor and things is built on trust. And if you’re building that trust from minute one like that, I could see that being really, really helpful. So, wow, this has been really awesome. thank you so much for joining us today. So one more time, if someone wants to kind of get in touch, you feel like you’re,

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (20:20)
Mm-hmm.

Cody Crabb (20:30)
perfect fit, ideal person to be in this, where can someone reach out to you and get involved?

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (20:39)
You can reach out at BossbuildHER.com I’m on Instagram, Facebook, ⁓ bossbuildher. And I want to add one really important note that I didn’t get to say, but general contracting is a gateway into real estate investing. once you know all the subs and you’re getting those subcontractor rates, your profit increases like drastically. I’ve been able to do that for myself and I had no real estate investing experience, but now we

Cody Crabb (20:49)
of course.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (21:06)
We own multiple properties and it’s been a win-win. So it’s a vertically integrated business.

Cody Crabb (21:13)
Yeah, so give me more information on that. Like what types of relationships tend to lead to the good outcomes there and things once you start doing.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (21:22)
I mean, if you’re doing bathroom remodels with a plumber and you’re doing like a couple of remodels a month, he’s going to be giving you better rates. So then when you have your own project, like instead of paying $25,000 to get your whole house repiped or whatever, you’re probably going to be paying like a third of that because you have already built up that consistency. And he doesn’t have to know that it’s your house.

You know, I’m just saying the relationships and like capitalizing on those relationships and the contractor rates is like priceless when it comes to real estate investing.

Cody Crabb (21:55)
Yeah, wow, that’s really awesome. Thank you so much for all this insight. This has been really helpful. ⁓ Once again, and I should mention too, ⁓ is Boss Build Her. So we’ll have that link in the comments, but just so you don’t type it wrong, BossbuildHER.com, is that right? Awesome. Okay, well, ⁓ thanks again one more time. ⁓ Audience, thank you for joining us today. If you have any questions for us, feel free to reach out. We are available ⁓ on

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (22:11)
That’s right.

Cody Crabb (22:23)
on all the sites, all the comments. Go ahead and leave us a message down below. And make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode with more awesome people like Tiffany. Thank you one more time for joining us Tiffany and have a great day.

Tiffany Brown – Boss BuildHER (22:37)
Thank you, bye.