REAL ESTATE / Tallahassee Democrat Sunday, June 17, 2012 / PAGE 5

its. And when Charron began playing baseball at Maclay as a ninth-grader, the vener-able Ashcroft built on what Joey had learned from his parents.

“He (Ashcroft) scared me to death,” Charron recalled. “But he set the bar high. We practiced hard and long, especially on the funda-mentals. And even though we were in the small-school classification, we took on the big boys like Lincoln, Godby and Florida High, and we held our own.”

Coming out of high school, Charron weighed baseball scholarship offers from Flor-ida and Tulane, but picked the New Orleans university in large part for its stellar engineering program and the fact he figured to get plenty of playing time as future NCAA Coach-of-the-Year Rick Jones rebuilt the Green Wave program after

some down years. “It wasn’t easy playing

major college baseball and getting a degree in mechan-ical engineering,” Charron said. “But I was conditioned to do whatever it took to get the job done.”

Just as Charron main-tained his control on the pitching mound, he likes the fact that his home build-ing business is small and hands-on. “I draft my own plans; I’m on the job sites every day; I feel like I’m in touch with what’s going on and with my customers,” says Charron, who markets and sells his homes through Realtor® Tiffany Hamilton at Armour Realty. “I think it helps to be responsive to their needs.”

After a brief stint with minor league affiliates of the Toronto Blue Jays, where he grew dismayed that the concept of a “team” took a backseat to “indi-viduals” trying to make a major league roster, Char-ron entered home building in March 2005 as the build-

ing industry’s boom-years were winding down.

In those good years, Pow-erhouse would build about 20 homes but in today’s slowly recovering economy, he’d be happy with 12 homes a year in the $190,000 to $270,000 price range. “I never want to get really big,” he says. “We’re to the point where I

am hiring a full-time per-son, but in order to keep high quality, my long-term goal is not to be a high-vol-ume builder, but rather to keep customer satisfaction as our priority.”

Being a one-man oper-ation has its challeng-es. Charron draws plans, solves problems, and works

job sites by day and does business-related paperwork until late at night — a bor-derline-workaholic lifestyle that might change now that he and his wife Amanda are enjoying 2-month-old Chris-topher. “Home building is a demanding, almost all-con-suming business,” Charron says. “But balance is impor-tant and I want that quality time with my family.”

Charron’s wife, brother and sister all work in Joey’s parents’ successful fami-ly-owned businesses. But

Joey took the road less trav-eled and he’s never regret-ted it. “In baseball, every game was different and in home building, every home, every customer is differ-ent and unique. There’s an excitement to meeting the challenge… it’s why I love what I do.”

— Paul M. Thompson is the CEO and executive vice president of the Florida

Home Builders Association and executive officer of the Tallahassee Builders Asso-

ciation.

Charron “balance is important and I want that quality time with my family.”