LARRY TAYLOR Taylored Restoration, Anchorage, Alaska
For Larry and Elaine Taylor, diversification wasn’t so much a choice as it was an imperative. When recession hit Anchorage in 1985, the husband-and-wife owners of what is now Taylored Restoration nearly lost their business.
“It appeared to us that we were going to go out of business or find something else to get involved in,” Larry says. “That’s how we got into restoration. It was a desperation move at the time.”
Since then, the Taylors have gone from merely surviving to thriving, building a $10 million restoration business that employs more than 100 people. Insurance restoration is the company’s focus. But the Taylors also re-entered the full-service market as soon as it recovered, and they recently opened a small-jobs department to handle handyman-type repairs for both the insurance and the general consumer markets. “We’ve become the major player in the restoration market, but we’re always susceptible to the insurance companies trying to find someone else to do the work,” Larry says. “We’ve always felt like we need to keep remodeling healthy so we wouldn’t have to depend on restoration 100%.”
The small-jobs department also helps the Taylors with marketing, keeping the company in front of customers who might one day need either restoration or larger-scope remodeling.
“We have to make sure people are aware that we do all three kinds of jobs,” Larry says, “and we get good cross-referencing from each department. Once we’re in their domain and they like us, they like us coming back to do another job.”
Larry attributes the company’s successful growth and diversification to a sound management structure and his and Elaine’s willingness to delegate responsibility and step back from the day-to-day operation of the company. Larry and Elaine maintain a board-of-directors-like executive decision-making role and monitor fundamental financial data. But they have largely removed themselves from a hands-on role in managing the company. Instead, each of the company’s three departments has its own manager (as well as its own budget and financials) under the oversight of a “leadership team” consisting of Larry and Elaine, their children and co-owners Lisa and Trent, and a fluid cast of key employees.
“The biggest problem is that the owner has to let go of responsibility,” Larry says. “If you’re trying to grow and diversify and you’re a hands-on control freak, which most of us are as contractors, it’s difficult to make that transition.”