In an industry categorically dominated by men, Sydney and Wintersage Red Horse are working to rewrite the script on the handyman profession. The married couple are the first women to win the “Best Handyman” award in our Best of Arkansas poll, just two years after launching their business, Luck Be A Lady Rentals & Repair .
Before co-founding Luck Be A Lady, Wintersage Red Horse, 33, was a maintenance supervisor for a luxury apartment complex, but she said she’s been interested in handiwork since she was in her late teens. “It was always an interest, and I knew that school wasn’t really for me,” she said. She didn’t immediately explore a career in the trades profession, though.
“It was kind of discouraged growing up,” she said. “You know in the South you’re supposed to do more feminine things.” But she knew being a skilled tradesperson paid well and “people always need that kind of work.” Her first job in the business was as an auto tech, which she did for about five years. She’s even souped up her own Jeep and always has various projects going on at home, in addition to working in the business full time.
Sydney Red Horse, 34, previously worked as a dance teacher, and wasn’t “born handy” the way she describes Wintersage. But after the Red Horses teamed up to turn an inherited embroidery business into a residential property, the pair realized they worked really well together.
It wasn’t an easy job. “It was so gross,” Sydney Red Horse said. “So we went in and we took out all the carpeting, everything got a fresh coat of paint, we stained cabinets, refinished the tub, wrapped the countertops and we tiled the whole thing.”
Wintersage Red Horse said that Sydney Red Horse caught on fast, and she’d never seen anything like it before.
“I was a professional housewife for a couple of years,” Sydney Red Horse said, noting that the experience felt empowering. “I could be in one room doing one thing, and she was in another room doing another thing, and it was, like, ‘We’re actually pretty efficient.’ Plus, we have fun with it.”
‘There were just no handywomen services’
When the Arkansas natives first launched Luck Be A Lady, they took a sink-or-swim approach. It was tough and a little scary, they said, especially because Wintersage Red Horse left her full-time position.
“It was a $60 job here, like go hang a mirror here, and then it was like, ‘How are we gonna eat?’” Sydney Red Horse said.
Still, the pair were motivated by the lack of gender diversity in the industry, which Wintersage Red Horse had seen firsthand.
“There were just no handywomen services,” she said.
When Sydney Red Horse needed something fixed at her home in the past, she said, it was typically a man who showed up.
“There’s a comfortability and a safety element to having another woman,” she said.
So they kept on. Business dramatically improved after the Red Horses did about a week’s worth of work at a woman’s home, sanding and staining exterior cedar posts and completing drywall work inside. Impressed with the finished product, their new client wrote a recommendation for the company on the “Little Rock Power Women” Facebook page, which has nearly 30,000 members.
It turns out there is a market for handywomen. According to Facebook analytics, the demographics of the company’s reach is about 92% women between the ages 30 and 50, Sydney Red Horse said. And it’s not because they intentionally target ladies either, but they’re not complaining.
“We love working for other women,” Sydney Red Horse said. “We know what it’s like when someone comes in and asks what you want, and they’re not looking to you for the answer.” It’s important, she said, to be able to communicate with the woman of the house and give her what she wants and “not what we think she needs.”
Jills of all trades, the Red Horses do kitchen renovations, deck builds, popcorn ceiling removal, drywall repair, tile installation and more. They recently fashioned a custom Pinterest-inspired farmstand for a client and regularly take on small jobs like TV mounting, swapping out garbage disposals and replacing doors.
Luck Be A Lady also does work for a couple of local nonprofits. The Red Horses are the “handy gals” for the 20th Century Club of Little Rock’s Lodge and they fix up units for the Retired Teachers Housing Inc. at the Parkview Towers in downtown Little Rock’s historic Quapaw Quarter.
A major notch on the Red Horses’ tool belts was being awarded the Emerging Minority Business of 2024 from the Little Rock Regional Chamber, an accolade that was completely unexpected, Sydney Red Horse said, because they don’t know who nominated them.
Wintersage Red Horse said the award made her proud of how far they’ve come as a business and as people.
“I hadn’t always made great decisions, but I feel like I’ve really changed my life around having this business and to be able to make an impact in the community and earn the community’s trust,” she said.
Despite the early success, the Red Horses said they have to have thick skin because of their encounters with sexism. Some just find it hard to understand that women can do this work.
“We’ve had some people make some incredibly rude comments,” Sydney Red Horse said. It’s confusing, too, she added, that some people who have contacted them about jobs still find it surprising that they’re dealing with women.
“I shouldn’t get offended, but people will be like, ‘So you do this? You do this work?’”
Largely she doesn’t believe it’s intentional. “I just think it’s ingrained that it’s not the norm … yet.”
Breaking the handyman stigma
Sydney and Wintersage Red Horse got into this business knowing that seemingly everyone at some point has been burned by a handyman who got paid up front and didn’t finish the job or did shoddy work, but they’re still surprised by how appreciative of their work clients can be.
“You do the job that you say that you’re going to do, and people are incredibly grateful,” Sydney Red Horse said. “You keep the price what you said you’re going to do it for, and you wind up with this level of satisfaction. But those simple things I didn’t know were so hard to come by.”
Despite recognizing that the male-dominated industry they’re carving a path in has issues, the Red Horses clarified that they are not “man hating.” They have a male on their team, and if they send him out to do a job for a female client, they give them a heads-up and reassure them that “he’s with us and he’s really great.” They’re very picky about who they hire and ask questions of potential employees about how they’re going to make clients feel comfortable.
At the time of this writing, the Red Horses have two full-time staff members — one man and one woman. By the time this issue goes to press in July, a new woman will have started work at Luck Be A Lady following her graduation from the Skills to Launch Program of the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, a scholarship-based program designed to provide technical skills to adults 18 and over seeking a career in the trades.
“It’s so great to be able to provide jobs for other women who are interested in this kind of work,” Wintersage Red Horse said.
The plan is to eventually acquire a bigger team that can offer monthly service packages or quarterly maintenance plans, in addition to owning more rental properties. Sydney Red Horse said she envisions maybe one day having a “one-stop shop handywoman team” with a female plumber, a female electrician and a female HVAC technician.
“We’re pretty ambitious, she said, “but one thing at a time.”
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