In the industry of custom home building and renovation and commercial construction, Sonoma Building Company has built a stellar reputation as a Certified Energy Star Partner.

But Rick Tozier says the success of his company is built on other factors that are less tangible than the high-level energy-efficient products and quality standards he uses.

“People hire me for two reasons,” Rick says. “First, they get a professional presentation. They’re not going to get a bid on a half million dollar house written on a napkin when they work with me.”

And – even more important than that first impression – customers hire Sonoma Building Company because it offers another quality that is critical to any relationship – trust. People know they can trust that Rick will take the time at the beginning of the construction process to understand their lifestyle so he can deliver a finished product that meets their needs.

I’ve also worked hard to surround myself with good people and trade partners to support our customers. Sonoma is a team of four; Valerie in the office supporting customer design choices and business accounting, Neil and Garret in the field supporting new construction and remodeling activities. We have also developed strong trade partnerships. We use the same supply base and trade contractors on all of our projects; we know what to expect of them and they know what to expect of us.

“More than anything else, I love helping somebody get the house they want,” he says. “They can see the house they want and feel it, but they need me to get it built.”

Rick started Sonoma Building Company in 2005, building houses that generally range from $300,000 to $900,000. Currently, he’s building two, getting ready to start another and is in the middle of two renovation projects. He’s busy, and the work is all coming from referrals.

“It’s not the building that’s hard to do,” he says. “It’s successfully bringing the customer’s dreams to reality.”

At a Crossroads

Rick was reared by a father who worked in the world of finance but enjoyed home building projects on the weekends. Rick shared his father’s weekend passion, and when he went away to college, he spent summers working in the construction industry.

After graduating with a degree in business and economics from Gordon College in Boston in 1991, he went to work as the director of operations for a start-up company that manufactured electro-mechanical equipment. “It was exciting to create a product,” he says. “Unlike the corporate world, I saw the start-up as having endless opportunities even though it was a lot of hard work. It was incredibly rewarding.”

Rick had worked for the company for 13 years when it was sold.

“I was at a crossroads,” he says. “I was approaching 40, and I knew I didn’t want to go to work for a corporate, public company with good pay only to spend my days sitting in a cubicle doing something that didn’t excite me and never see my kids.”

So, Rick left central New Hampshire to move back to his wife’s home state of North Carolina. Here, he took the lessons he learned from his prior employment, combined them with his childhood passion for building and began his own start-up, Sonoma Building Company. His problem-solving skills and eye for design have been critical to his success.

“We try really hard to make sure the customers are happy at the end of the job,” he says. “Anybody can build a house, but what we try to do is look at what we can do differently. It’s the little stuff that matters. I want to understand how people live, where they drop their keys when they come in the door. We’re the translators.”

Encouraging Words

Sonoma Building Company was started in Winston-Salem because of what Rick saw here. In his opinion – based on his experience further north – taxes are low, jobs are good, and retirees find the area attractive because of the moderate climate and low cost of living.

To prove his point, he says he’s building a $549,000 house in Brookberry Farm that would cost over $750,000 in the greater Boston area. He says the property taxes on that house are less than one-third of what they would be in many areas in the northeast.

“This is a great place to live, and it’s going to grow,” he says.

That’s the kind of attitude that earned Rick Tozier the position as president of the Winston-Salem Homebuilders Association in 2009. He says the most important part of his job was to “give people an encouraging word” during a time when he says the industry went through “the largest shrinkage in modern history.”

Today, he’s encouraged by what he sees as building potential in the future. In fact, he makes a forecast that should be good news to lots of folks when he says, “In the next two years, I predict we’ll have a shortage of new homes.” And for builders, that’s definitely an encouraging word.

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