Nikki Smith

I attribute my success to my parents. They truly allowed me to just be me and supported me in anything that I wanted to do. They instilled some things into me that I take with me and that I share with everybody: you are with me, if I got it, you got it. There's never gonna be a point where someone is in need and they're around me that they're gonna go without. I've been raised with the mindset that if my mom had one can of ravioli and it was 10 of us, 10 friends, she'd take a can of tomato sauce and make it stretch between all of us. My mom, you see her, it's like, Mommy, you think bubblegum and raindrops is falling at the sky, but it's because she has just an overall positive aura about her. She's always looking at the brighter side of things. She's such a positive person that it's almost contagious. You can't be around her without feeling that level of comfort and positivity. I've adopted it.

The best career advice I ever received was from the owner of the company. He said to me one time, when there was a tough decision to be made, 'Do you want to continue to give out cookies and have pedicures, or do you want a seat at the table?' He told me that if you say you want to have a seat at the table, a seat at the table also requires you sometimes to make uncomfortable decisions, and you need to be ready for that. Something that I've taken with me over the last couple of years is that having a seat at the table is not always glorious. Sometimes it's ugly, sometimes it's sad. When you want to be a person that makes decisions, you need to be able to take it for the good, the bad, and the ugly, and know that this is what it takes when you want to be someone in a position of authority, or a position of power, or a decision maker. You gotta make the tough decisions, too.

Don't play dumb. It is okay to be the smartest woman in the room when you're with a room full of men. Be outspoken, be heard. You don't have to sit in the backseat. A lot of the times, we come into this business and we are put in the position where we're setting someone else up to be put on the pedestal, without realizing that we can sit on that pedestal sometimes, too. There's opportunities for your voice to be heard. You don't always have to be support, you can be the frontrunner. You need to know when and where, know the difference between when it's time for you to step up and when it's time for you to take a back seat. But it is okay and more than okay to be smart, even when you're up against some of the most technical people, because a lot of the time, some of the tech people overlook the little minor details, and that's where we come in at. Women are detail-oriented. I think we do a better job than men when it comes to that. Get yourself acclimated with the technical side, be present, go to the job walks, get on the scenes. When you're entering into this market, don't worry about locking in prospects. Spend those first 3 months in the field. Go to the job sites, work on the job sites with the teams. You're not just a cute face. You'll hear that. Because you really want to be a part, and they'll respect you. Because once you have their respect, the sky is the limit. You gotta earn it. Get in the field, literally get in the field. Get out there, and not just in the field of prospecting, get on the actual job site. Spend your time there in the beginning and earn your respect.

Being a woman has its challenges sometimes. It's a fight, but I don't mind fighting. One of the biggest challenges is making sure that you are heard, having a voice. But I'm noticing that the tide is changing a little bit in the industry. When I started 4 years ago, I was probably one of the only women, one or two of the women that I would see. There's Sydney from ProMax, who's been around for quite some time in our area, but she's our senior, she's been around for quite some time. In regards to those of us who started around the same time, it wasn't that many of us. But I'm starting to see more and more construction companies are leaning towards hiring more women and having a more presence of women in these spaces, so that's definitely a positive and a turn in the right direction.

The values most important to me are integrity and transparency. Just overall, be good. Be good. That is something that I'm so big on. If I could just drill in to people to just do the right thing, I think the world would be a better place. But I have to say, transparency and integrity, those would be the two.