Leading Ladies

Cally Coleman Fromme

Executive vice president, Zarsky Lumber, Victoria, Texas

Fromme, 43, worked in retail selling clothing before joining Zarsky in 1996 as special events coordinator. Her father, Dan Coleman, is president of Zarsky, and husband Travis is a vice president. Fromme is an accomplished public speaker and savvy communicator across all platforms who tweets under the name LmbrChick. In October 2011 she was elected the NLBMDA’s first female chairperson in the association’s 94-year history.

Retail is retail is retail. When I came on in ’96, I decided that I did want to make lumber my career. It seemed a waste not to be part of a business that my father and grandfather had done so much good with.

My forte is not so much the lumber, but the management, the personal end of it, the human resources, managing the people and the benefits rather than buying lumber and hardware. Women may tend to more to be more attuned to those aspects of the business.

With a family business, you don’t get paid highly, you don’t get titles immediately. You need to earn the respect. Eventually I became vice president; it took years. It was a process I had to achieve. I couldn’t be a flake.

If I don’t understand something, I will ask. Having a sense of humor and being able to joke with these guys and still being able to act like a woman has been key for me. If I had been uptight, my rise would have stopped long ago.

Down here [in south Texas] there is a macho aspect to the culture and it doesn’t always sit well to have me say, “This is something that needs attention.” So I don’t tell the employee; I have a man do it. It’s just tactics, a workaround.

Many years ago, at a Lumbermen’s Association of Texas meeting, when it was time to approve the budget, I looked at the numbers and realized they weren’t attainable, but no one was saying anything. I did, and they thanked me for speaking up. I will ask the obvious questions. And sometimes a guy 20 years older than me might say, “I’m glad you asked that.”

My dad is not much of a communicator. He is also very private, so he was never of the style where he would lay out the books for his managers. I have decided that that is not the management style I want to take. I want to be more open. I think it is much more beneficial for management to fully understand what is going on and what is involved.

The way my dad did things works, but the world changes and we adapt. He is not technologically involved. He doesn’t dig into all the ways computers can be a tool. He takes a lot of time to make a decision. But sometimes I think there are opportunities where it’s necessary to make a fast decision.

My dad is the one who grew the company, more so than my grandfather. A lot of his success was due to his careful consideration of opportunities. The last thing I want to do is do any damage to a company that they have so carefully grown. My goal is not to be the kid everyone talks about who ran a family business into the ground.

I’d love to see more young people get into this industry, but they aren’t getting out of college and saying, “Gee, I want to work in a lumberyard.” I don’t know how to glamorize it. However, my 10-year-old daughter [she’ll turn 11 in February] is proud of me, and she gets pretty tickled when she sees me in the magazines.

Someone asked her at an association meeting if she would like to work in a lumberyard, and when she said “Yes,” I was pleased.

One More Leading Lady Speaks

Thomas Lumber’s Deanna Jenkins her management style in this Web-only interview

Deanna Jenkins

President, Thomas Lumber Co, Orlando, Fla.

Jenkins, 42, took a different tack toward the top than our other Leading Ladies: She worked her way up the ladder at Thomas Lumber largely through sales job. She started as an estimator–after having spent three years at Panning Lumber right out of high school–at the yard 21 years ago, then jumped into sales, becoming vp of outside sales in 2002.

About six years ago, the owner [Gayden Wilkins] left to go to Missouri and said, “You’re it.” He’d been running the business for 45 years, he brought me on and mentored me. Lots of people think I’m Gayden’s daughter, but I’m not. He has three daughters, but they aren’t interested [in running] the business.

I never had a problem in sales being female, probably because of my background as an estimator. It helped working for somebody who gave me a chance. I have done every job here except bookkeeping and driving a truck.

It’s unfortunate that you have to be born into the business. I have a girl here who is really good, and she’ll have an opportunity because she’s here. She started out as a receptionist; now she’s a sales coordinator. I’ve got another woman here who’s been in outside sales for 26 years; I tried to get her for years and finally did when her company closed.

I’ve had a lot of mentors; Gayden was one of the best, and I have another mentor, a retired exec from The Home Depot, he’s been mentoring me for the past three years. I listen to my mentors. When you have to let people go, it’s been great to have that guidance.

You have to be sincere, and honest. Women in general, we have a better way of conveying our message. In a lumberyard, you deal with a wide range of people, and you learn how to deal with those different personalities. I think we have more patience. But I have met the other extreme, like the contractor’s wife or girlfriend.

In outside sales, I had to dress down. I rarely wore makeup or did my hair fancy. Sometimes you have as many as four trades [on a job site] and you might run into some laborers who are a little hostile. I cold-called a lot at first, but then after the first year or two, I worked off referrals. They knew I knew framing, which helped.

If I see something that needs to be done, I’m going to stop and do it. Like today, I’m out in shipping. People know I’ll do what it takes. So they know that I’ll ask anyone, male or female, to do something.

As an outside sales person, I was flying on my own. The competition weren’t very friendly. You might see two guys, competitors, on a job site and they’d be joking around, talking about hunting and fishing, but when I showed up, they’d clam up.

A lot of guys didn’t care that I was female, though some did. I miss outside sales. You got to see a lot of neat houses and projects.

We specialize in the high-end custom home builder. We did not want to chase the high-volume, low-margin business. We do some light commercial and we do stuff with the amusement parks.

My competition knows I’m not going to chase the tract builder. We are going to cater to the high-end remodeler as well. And we have a deep inventory of stuff you can’t find on other shelves.

Now that I’m stuck here [in the office] for the past six years, I don’t get out much anymore and I miss that. But for me, it’s been exciting up until about three years ago.

When you work with people you’ve worked with for 20 years and have to cut hours and let people go, that’s the hardest part. You are dealing with people’s livelihoods. I’ve shed a few tears I can tell you.

I feel that I am truly a steward of Gayden’s business. I have taken this on as though it’s my own. I really don’t know that I could go out and convince someone else I could do this.

Now after 23 years finally some of the competition will say, “Oh yeah, she’s okay.” It’s been very rewarding all in all.

— Kate Tyndall