Mandy Rennehan - The Blue Collar CEO: My Gutsy Journey from Rookie Contractor to Multi-Millionaire Construction Boss

To my bro and best buddy. Its bullshit we have had to continue without you and your stinky-ass feet. Missing you is an understatementit doesnt even come close.

M a had just turned seventy. She took a zero turn, quick and smooth, on the John Deere commercial mower Id sprung for. It was another beautiful July day in seaside Nova Scotia, where Ma spends half her time mowing the lawn of my 18-acre compound in Yarmouthwith its blow-your-mind views of the Bay of Fundyand the other half willing the grass to grow. Faster. She loves the mowing that much. We call that machine her later-in-life best friend.

There she was, in her happy place, absorbed in cutting those even rows. She had no idea I was there.

I waited for her to finish a long stretch, then crept up behind her on my buggy. I got right up close. She pulled another sharp turn and found herself facing me, head on.

Mandy Dawn! she screeched.

She wanted to mow me over. Just this once. I could tell. But instead, with a big saucy grin, she bounced around me and drove off to finish the row.

The sun was high on that hill. Her skin was bright pink. I yelled, Ma, you look like a lobster in a pot that somebody forgot about!

She idled the machine, looked back at me through her grass-covered glasses, her fifteen-year-old Blue Jays World Series hat askew atop her head, and said, You listen here, Mandy! You mind your business and leave me and my boyfriend here, John Deere, alone.

I roared laughing. She zipped off. A bit of my hearta happy, contented, grateful bitwent with her.

Not three minutes later, I heard another motor. It was Pup, my dad, making his way up the long driveway, riding side saddle at 65 kilometres an hour on our propertys four-wheeler, the landscape cart in tow. Yes, side saddle. And as full of himself as the rooster that got you out of bed at 5 a.m.

Had anyone asked me when I was young what my markers for success would be, I doubt seeing my mother on a tractor or Pup zooming by on a four-wheeler would have topped the list. But when I talk to young people and they ask me whats best about growing older, I say to them, Who the hell doesnt want to be a millionaire? The kids teachers will tell me no ones quite taken that approach before. But I frame it for them this way: its not about the money; its not about getting rich. Its that maybe, someday, you could send your parents on a trip they couldnt otherwise afford. You could buy someone you love, whos struggling, something they need. I make it about giving. One of the kids will say, Yeah, I could buy my parents a new house. And I tell them thats just what I did when I became a millionaire: I bought my mom and dad a house.

Now, my folks dont live together on that big seaside acreage anymore. Theyre no longer married. But they both take care of ittheyve even found a kind of peace with each other in the project. Theyre remarkably able to put their differences aside to work on the windmill property. (Keep your pants on. Ill tell you all about the windmill later.)

The truth is, my mission, from as far back as I can remember, has been to make my parents lives easier. Mowing that acreage brings out a joy and assertiveness in Ma, a real contentment that I never saw enough of growing up. Building a multi-million-dollar business, as a female and as a lesbian, in an industry that still, three decades into my career, barely knows what to do with either, has been hard, to say the least. You wouldnt credit how hard. Some people go through life in the left lane of a busy freeway without a speed limit or off-ramps. So much for the lucky few. The rest of us find ourselves on dirt roads full of potholes and deep ditches.

At times, Ive wondered if I was on a road at all.

But has it been worth it?

Show me Ma, fierce and proud, whipping around out there on her tractor. Give me a glimpse of Pup zipping past on the four-wheeler, happy as a clam. Then ask me that question again.

W hats your first move when you really dont know what to do next? You call your Newfoundland friend.

She answered on the first ring, as if she could feel the urgency. San Francisco, I told her. The Paris of North America. The Golden Gate Bridge.

Most importantly, though, I told her this: the Gap had come calling. I laid out the opportunity in my best this is the real deal voice. I needed her to understand how bloody serious this was. There are things youll never have a second chance at. This trip would be my ticket, the genesis of my actual career, the one Id been building toward.

Or it wouldnt.

My life was about to change, one way or the other.

I was twenty-four years old, an entrepreneur from small-town Nova Scotia on her way up. Way up. Sprung, in all my unlikely splendour, straight out of Canadas Maritimes. And I wasnt just some ordinary businesswoman to contend with. I was a one-woman revolution in the making, a visionary, kickass lesbian in the tradesa lesbian rethinking the trades, the whole goddamn construction industry, thank you very much.

Of course the Gap had come calling. I know, right?

Underneath that, though, I was a lobster fishermans daughter whod started out catching bait in the Bay of Fundy. Id worked for years as a farmhand, feeding andIm not kidding youherding cows on local farms. Id spent what seemed (to me) like a lifetime of night shifts mopping layers of beer and puke off the floors of Halifax pubs. San Francisco? The Gap? Seriously? Id never set foot on the US West Coast. Shit, Id turned twenty-one before Id eaten my first garden salad. Now I was about to fly cross-continent to make a pitch to take over facilities maintenance for every one of this retail giants 230-plus Canadian stores.

Holy check-your-pants shit.

Midway through my spiel to my friend, I heard a commotion in the background.

Okay, I said. What the hell are you doing?

Jeez, by! Im packing my shit and coming on that plane with you!

For anyone unlucky enough to have never set foot on The Rock on Canadas East Coast, by is Newfoundland English for boy, which, further, is Newfoundland English for buddy or friend. An outsider needs a sharp earand maybe a translatorto make their way in that glorious salt-caked land.

Newfoundland wasnt asking. She was telling. And it sounded like she was throwing everything she owned, plus her Aunt Lucy besides, into her suitcase.

I havent come across many people who could make me laugh more easily than Newfoundland. She was the sort who held nothing back. You never had to wonder what she was thinking. Thats my kind of person. Real.

She flew into Halifax to meet me. We had a few hours before the flight to California. Once there, wed head straight from the airport to Gaps headquarters. But as she approached me out of her arrivals gate, she looked me up and down and said, Yeah, youre not going into that meeting with those clothes on, my friend.

I was in jeans (ripped), work boots, and a hoodie. Job site clothes. Okay, my clothes. Period. My hair was pulled back, but not with flairjust to get it the hell out of my face.

Newfoundland shook her head. Youve got to look respectable.

The next thing you know, we were zipping through the city and pulling up to a Reitmans store. Thats right, Reitmans. Where else could I get the female corporate look on a shoestring budget? I have always hated shopping, and I detest trying on clothes. It just feels like a waste of time: theres always something else I could be doing. But I trusted her intentions. I sucked it up. My friend pushed me around that store like she was on a mission. She picked out the most professional-looking shirt and pants she could findand got me into them. The pants were a bit long, but theyd do. I walked up to the cash fully clad in my new duds and paid for what I was wearing. We ripped the tags off and headed back to the airport.