Winning Ideas from
Winning Women with Paula Turner

Paula Turner is not a quitter. As a matter of fact, she started her current company, Greensboro-based Lexair Electronics, after the failure of her first company. With a background in supplying the military with aerospace electronic components, she had built her initial company based on military purchase orders, but had no long-term contracts. As the military went through major downsizing, Paula’s customers and business dwindled away.

After that business failure, Paula found herself “lost in space” for a while. She didn’t know what she should do. There she was, the woman who had always been so in control of life, now looking at her two toddlers and no income. She was terrified.

Her knee jerk reaction was to consider getting a “job”—working for someone else. She has vivid memories of an interview where she thought, “I already know so much more than this guy…what am I doing here?” That was it; she was going to try again, but this time, with an entirely different business model. She sat down and drew up a primitive business plan, basing her company on a focused product and services targeted at enterprise customers. This would allow her company to have a foundation of long-term business via contracts.

Paula Turner

Determined to avoid debt, Paula started her new business out of her home, working by herself. Gradually she began to gain contracts and hire employees, enabling her to lease business space, which she expanded and expanded. Later, she gained her certification through the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), enabling her to stand out in the corporate purchasing community as a certified woman-owned business. And, today her business is thriving, causing Paula to look around in amazement at just how far she’s come.

Paula had an interesting approach for benchmarking her business success. Right out of school, she went to work for her father’s company. He groomed her to be a salesperson and, ultimately, a business owner. She always considered him a successful businessman, so her goal had always been to meet or surpass his highest single-year revenue. When she did that at the end of 2005, she was finally able to exhale, knowing that Lexair Electronics was on solid footing. Making that number was very fulfilling for Paula, and she knew that her father was also tremendously proud of her accomplishment.

Named as one of the “Top 500 Woman Owned Businesses in the US” by DiversityBusiness.com, Paula believes that more women need to “Go for it!” in business. She is proof positive that things aren’t always easy…if they were, anyone could do it. But she encourages women to identify their passion and then stick with it. Although her industry is far from glamorous, she knows her products and loves to help her customers. She stays focused and flexible, which she admits can sometimes be a difficult combination, always surrounding herself with people smarter than she is who are not afraid to voice their thoughts and ideas.

Above all else, Paula believes that you must count on yourself to make things happen.