Community Highlights: Meet Taylor Preston of LABR

Today we’d like to introduce you to Taylor Preston.  

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up in Grand Rapids and moved to Detroit to start my first full-time job at Ally Financial. I had a goal to get back to Grand Rapids by the time I was 30. During a summer internship in college, I met a mentor who provided me with opportunities to grow early in my career, this ultimately led to a slight detour to Sacramento, California for three years where I met my now-wife. The experience gained at that company provided me with the skillset that I needed to start LABR.

One of my best friends growing up, Christian Huempfner, started a landscaping company in high school, and a bunch of our friends worked for him throughout high school and college. After we moved on to start our careers, he didn’t have workers anymore which coincided with Uber coming out in Grand Rapids in 2014. He called me one day to explain that all he needs is workers who will follow instructions and that all of his target workers want to be in control of their schedule, His goal was to create a similar solution for general labor. I vividly remember telling him, “That all sounds great, but we don’t know anything about building an app.” 

We bought the domain LABR.com in 2016 and spent countless hours talking about what could be. Fast forward to 2020, I had gained experience in app development and told Christian I am ready to give this a real shot. We both have a vested interest in Grand Rapids, and I can’t think of a cooler opportunity than to bring a tech startup to the city we both grew up in. 

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I’m not sure that smooth roads or straight lines exist when starting a business from scratch. I think we were both a bit naive about how hard it really was to start from scratch and build a scalable business. It turns out that our skillsets were very complimentary to get through the early days. He had started his business, so he understood that you need to get scrappy, roll up your sleeves, and find a way to get it done. I had came from a much more corporate background where I understood how to run divisions, manage performance, and create strategic plans, but there was a big gap between getting off the ground and building a scalable business. We ended up finding a third co-founder, Kyle Duncan, who has a technical skillset and had worked in the staffing industry before, which helped bridge Christian’s grit and my ideas into a functioning app. 

There have been countless challenges along the way, but the biggest challenge looking back, has been how much work needs to go into building a great business. 

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about LABR?
LABR provides general labor to businesses through our mobile app. Clients post the shifts that they need, and our workers fill the jobs that fit their schedule/interests. Our workers are individuals who are looking to make income on their schedule, and our clients are primarily in Construction, Landscaping, Distribution, and Retail, although we have had clients with some very unique uses for our workers. It has been a lot of fun to see how many businesses can use our workers for their flexible workforce needs! 

We have two “clients,” our Helpers and the businesses who need an extra set of hands. Our differentiator for Helpers is that we allow them to pick the shifts that they want and don’t require them to stick to a 40-hour-per-week schedule. For clients, our order fulfillment, quality of workers, and ability to use us as short/as long as they need has set us apart. 

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I am risk-averse by nature but have stepped way out of my comfort zone to start LABR. I have always had a lot of ideas but never dove in to make any a reality. My mentality behind taking the leap to start is that if I want to give it a shot, I should do it before I am married with kids, and I can always fall back on my previous experience. I am glad I took the leap when I did because now, I am married with an 8-month-old, and I would not be able to take the risk I did a few years ago. 

In addition, being close to the owners of businesses the company I worked for had purchased, I saw the freedom that starting a business provides. That said, I was fortunate to have mentors who told me what the early years of starting a business are really like. It is easy to look at successful businesses and say, “I want that,” but the early years are a much bigger challenge that is easy to overlook. I am thrilled (and surprised) about the early success we have seen and hope 10 years from now I can be the mentor helping others early in their journey.

Contact Info:

• Website: LABR.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/labrtech/
• Facebook: Facebook.com/labrtechnologies
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/labrtech