By M. Simone Boyd
Wouldn’t you like to jump from one success to another in life? Personally, I’d like to skip all the valleys and forever live on the mountain top. But we all face adversity. And how we manage it can make or break our relationships.
That’s what inspires me about Tarrick and Tanisha Love. They managed adversity by trusting and supporting each other. In 2007, Tarrick took a leap of faith. He’d spent the past year working two jobs – the night shift as a Nissan engineer and the day shift building homes with a college friend. He planned to learn about real estate as an investment for his family. But, he realized that being a general contractor wasn’t much different than being a project manager.
Adversity arose when co-workers voiced concerns about him working on the night shift. And Tarrick was given an ultimatum: take a promotion to Mississippi, return to the day shift, or continue on the night shift and submit his resignation within 60 days. Tarrick talked it over with his wife and explained he wanted to build homes full-time.
Tanisha never gave it a second thought. “I never thought we wouldn’t make it because I know Tarrick and his work ethic,” she said. Tanisha admits she didn’t know much about the housing market. But she felt like building homes in downtown Nashville was going to work.
Tarrick says that his wife’s support meant a lot to him. “Because the one thing about my wife (the Loves look at each other and laugh) is that she speaks her mind. Had she not been on board she would have let me know,” he said. A year after Hart-Love Builders was born the housing market tanked, and it seemed like a perfect storm.
The Loves hadn’t sold their old home in Mt. Juliet, were saddled with two mortgages, and had five new homes that had not sold. Tarrick explains that they were able to weather the storm because Tanisha was rising through the ranks as an attorney for Kroll Background America, Inc. and her promotions helped to offset expenses.
Tarrick says he sometimes wondered if leaving Nissan was the right decision. “But God showed me how to make it work. Even though, we couldn’t sell the homes I would show our work. It wasn’t about selling them, but about building relationships.”
As a direct result of building relationships, they began building custom homes during the economic downtown and now build homes all over downtown Nashville. It’s ironic that success came to the Loves despite adversity. For me, that’s the lesson: it takes going through the valley to reach the mountaintop.
Next week, we’ll hear how Tanisha Hart-Love’s marketing savvy turned her husband into a reality television star, tips on building a thriving family business, and their thoughts on rising property taxes in downtown Nashville. In the meantime, visit the Loves at www.hartlovebuilders.com and www.facebook.com/hartlovebuilders for more photos of their home-building handiwork.