Brothers Ben and Dylan Taylor began D&B Construction in Tillsonburg two years ago and have one part-time employee.
Recipients of the Young Entrepreneur Grant, they’ve made networking connections at a CF Oxford event that led to business opportunities. Connecting with CF Oxford has provided new business contacts and the grant helped them purchase a trailer that increased efficiency of completing work more quickly.
D&B Construction is a deck and fence restoration company focusing on building, maintenance and repair of new and old decks and fences along with other services. The biggest challenge the brothers face is that there are too many challenges to address at once in business!
“We are learning that there are 100 things we could improve, streamline or work on, yet there is only enough time and resources to address one of them (at a time). This has been the biggest take away that we have gotten from running our own business,” Ben said.
Over the last two years they’ve learned to balance the quality of their installations with administrative and sales efforts. They’ve faced budget, revenue, marketing and sales challenges. They’ve obtained Client Relationship Management (CRM) Software and have learned that focussing on following up multiple times with customers has secured more jobs. “It doesn’t always secure the sale, but we have customers who we wouldn’t have hired us if we had given up when we didn’t hear back after our initial consultation.”
The brothers don’t hesitate to seek out advisors when they encounter business roadblocks. They’ve learned about the 4-L framework that includes: Liquid (Cashflow), Leads (Sales and Marketing), Labour (operations and Logistics), and Leadership (Management and Company Vision). “It helps to point out bottlenecks hampering business growth and helps us focus on the area that needs help the most,” Ben explained.
Thinking back to when they started the business, Ben said he wished he’d known that that business requires knowing how to do so many different jobs just to keep operations going. It requires being the accountant, salesman, and worker just to be able to operate.
Ben said he’d like Oxford County to know they are committed to running their business with integrity for both clients and employees.