Entrepreneur mans construction network virtually

WESTERN BUREAU:

DAINE MACKLIMORE, a jack-of-all-trades who has worked in various jobs from sales to tiling, is demonstrating his versatility by using social media to outsource the services of his Montego Bay-based construction business, Impulse Tiling and Construction Company, during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have a Facebook platform, and we are on Instagram, so we are able to be located, and we can be easily contacted. We go and do assessments so we can send out estimates, and we send out everything via email because we do not do face-to-face meetings due to the COVID,” Macklimore told The Gleaner.

“This network is more virtual than anything else. We go and assess, and we put a time frame on when we want to start a job and when we want to get the work completed.”

The 36-year-old entrepreneur, who hails from Ironshore in St James, explained that he got the idea for his company while assessing a potential construction job in 2019, the same year he was trained in tiling at the HEART Trust/NTA after previously working as a call centre agent.

“There was a girl I had met when I was working at a call centre, and she saw me posting something on Instagram regarding tiling. She called me and said she wanted the pedicure section of her nail shop to be tiled over, but when I did an analysis of the area, I realised that I would need a carpenter and a plumber as well,” said Macklimore.

“The girl said she did not know who to call as they could not find any reputable company to get a project like this going. I said, ‘Well, I know a lot of skilled persons in general construction, plus architecture and plumbing, so I can bottle together all these services and push them out,’ and I got the idea to start Impulse Tiling, a professional tradesman network that people can reach easily.”

Today, Impulse Tiling uses the services of 10 independent contractors who can be easily reached through Macklimore’s communication network and who can be counted on to do their jobs professionally and well.

“I am very business-savvy, and one of the key observations in the western region is that we do not have a lot of companies that people can rely on for different areas of construction. Businesses want to conduct certain types of jobs, and if they can get a level of professionalism, people would really appreciate it,” said Macklimore.