In the Denver Business Journal's 28th Mountain Desert Region's Entrepreneur of the Year awards, Sheryl Palmer was named a finalist in the Real Estate industry category. The CEO and President of Taylor Morrison Home Corp., stood out among many entrepreneurs as one who "demonstrates excellence and extraordinary success in such areas as innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities," reported the Denver Business Journal.

Palmer fits the bill, and she learned from one of the best: Her mom. Palmer's mother was a successful clothing designer, and due to the nature of her mother's business, Palmer moved eight times before high school. And while she was in high school, Palmer traveled with her mother to China to visit manufacturers. As she told the DBJ, "I paid close attention and watched everything she did." She added that while her mother had hopes for her children taking over the business, Palmer wanted to make her own money and make her own mark in the world.

She attributes her success to a positive attitude, curiosity and perserverance — which was needed to move through the recent homebuilding industry downturn. "We had the facts in front of us and a lot of uncertainty and really unprecedented volatility, but we just worked hard on creating an organization that could be flexible enough to survive," Palmer told the DBJ. 

And while it was extraordinarily painful to lay off employees, she said to survive, she needed to build a cost-efficient structure. 

Everything that was done then has paid off. Taylor Morrison's sales jumped from $1.3 to $2.3 billion in sales from 2012 to 2013, and the number of employees nearly doubled, from 693 to 1,259. Read more...

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