09/17/2026
The Grand River Fence Company Story 👀
Grand River Fence Company didn't really begin with Grand River Fence Company.
Our story started years earlier with a lawn mower, a fence project, a transition out of the military, and a business owner who had a lot more ambition than experience.
It would take several years, plenty of mistakes, a lot of learning, and eventually two veterans bringing their experiences together before Grand River Fence Company became what it is today.
It Started in 2020
After eight years serving in the United States Air Force as a TACP/JTAC, Neiko Guillory left active duty in 2019 and began figuring out what came next.
The transition from the military into civilian life wasn't as simple as finding another job. The military had provided structure, responsibility, a team, a mission, and a clear standard to work toward. The question became how to translate those things into civilian life.
The original plan wasn't fencing.
In early 2020, Neiko was exploring personal training and other opportunities when COVID changed the landscape almost overnight. So in March 2020, he started a small lawn care and landscaping business.
Then came a fence job.
One project became another. There was demand for the work, Neiko enjoyed building, and fencing began to make more sense than the direction the company had originally been heading.
The business evolved into Neiko's Fencing & Landscaping.
There wasn't a sophisticated business plan behind it.
There wasn't a management team.
There weren't polished systems, dashboards, KPIs, training programs, or years of fence-industry experience.
There was work that needed to be done and a willingness to figure out how to do it.
And that's exactly what happened.
Learning the Business the Hard Way
As the company grew, so did the challenges.
Neiko quickly learned that being willing to work hard and knowing how to build a fence were not the same thing as knowing how to build a company.
More customers meant more projects.
More projects meant more employees.
More employees meant more responsibility.
And suddenly, the problems weren't just about how to install a better fence.
How do you price work correctly?
How do you know whether you're actually making money?
How do you hire the right people?
How do you train them?
How do you create standards?
How do you sell consistently?
How much work can your crews actually produce?
How do you communicate with customers?
How do you hold people accountable?
How do you lead a company when you're also selling, estimating, installing, managing, marketing, and trying to figure everything else out at the same time?
The company was growing, but Neiko was learning just as quickly that revenue alone doesn't build a healthy business.
In many cases, growth simply exposes the things you haven't figured out yet.
That lesson would eventually become one of the foundations of Grand River Fence Company.
The Turning Point
In January 2022, Neiko attended a Mr. Fence Academy retreat.
One of the subjects discussed was something incredibly basic that he realized he didn't fully understand:
Markup is not margin.
It sounds simple.
But at the time, it represented something much larger.
There was an entire discipline behind running a successful fence company that Neiko had never been taught.
How much does the company actually need to produce every day?
What does overhead really cost?
What gross margin does a project need?
How many leads are required?
How many jobs need to be sold?
How productive does a crew need to be?
How should people be hired and trained?
How do you create accountability?
How do you build systems so the owner doesn't have to personally carry the entire company?
The focus began shifting.
It wasn't just about installing more fences anymore.
It was about understanding the business behind the fence.
Hiring improved.
Training improved.
Pricing improved.
Systems started developing.
Leadership became more intentional.
And the education continued.
The Next Chapter
Over the next several years, Neiko's Fencing & Landscaping continued to evolve.
What started as a small lawn care and landscaping business had become a legitimate fence company with employees, equipment, customers, and a growing presence throughout West Michigan.
But the greatest value of those years wasn't simply the growth of the company.
It was the education that came with it.
Neiko experienced firsthand what happens when a small business begins growing quickly. He learned about pricing and profitability, hiring and training, sales, production, leadership, communication, accountability, and the systems required to keep an organization moving in the same direction.
Some lessons came from success.
Others came from mistakes.
Both proved equally valuable.
Eventually, an opportunity arose that allowed Neiko to step away from the day-to-day operation of the company and pursue another chapter within the fencing industry.
Rather than leaving fencing altogether, he went deeper into it.
From Fence Contractor to Fence-Business Educator
Neiko became increasingly involved with Mr. Fence Academy and eventually became its Academy Director.
For the first time, his perspective expanded far beyond his own company.
Instead of solving problems inside one fence business, he was now working alongside contractors from across the country who were dealing with many of the same challenges he had experienced himself.
Pricing.
Cash flow.
Sales.
Production.
Hiring.
Training.
Leadership.
Accountability.
Marketing.
Communication.
Systems.
The experience provided something that's difficult to gain when you're buried inside your own company every day:
Perspective.
He could see what successful contractors were doing differently.
He could see the same mistakes happening repeatedly across different companies and different markets.
He could help owners understand their numbers, build processes, train their teams, improve sales, create accountability, and develop businesses that didn't depend entirely on the owner doing everything.
At the same time, he was continuing to learn.
Working with fence contractors across the country became an education of its own.
And eventually, a question started forming:
If we ever built another fence company, what would we do differently knowing everything we know now?
That question would eventually become the foundation for Grand River Fence Company.
Then the Story Came Full Circle
There was another person who would become an important part of that next chapter.
Shane Davis.
Shane wasn't a stranger.
In fact, Shane had been Neiko's first employer after leaving the military.
Years later, their paths crossed again under very different circumstances.
Shane had his own military background, having served as a Green Beret in the United States Army before returning to West Michigan and building businesses of his own.
The two came from different military communities and had different professional experiences, but there was a lot of common ground.
Discipline.
Accountability.
Problem-solving.
Leadership.
Service.
And the belief that standards matter.
Eventually, conversations began about building a fence company together in Grand Rapids.
But this time, the circumstances were completely different.
Neiko wasn't the person who had picked up a lawn mower in 2020 trying to figure out how to start a business.
Years of operating a fence company had happened since then.
Years of working with other contractors had happened.
There had been successes.
There had been mistakes.
There had been lessons learned about people, leadership, money, systems, sales, production, and what it actually takes to operate a company.
Shane brought his own leadership, business experience, discipline, and perspective to the equation.
Together, they had an opportunity that most business owners never get:
The opportunity to build again while knowing what they wished they had known the first time.
What Would We Do Differently?
That became the real starting point for Grand River Fence Company.
Not:
How do we start another fence company?
But:
If we were starting from scratch today, knowing everything we've learned, what would we build?
What systems would we put in place before we desperately needed them?
How would we train people?
How would we manage the numbers?
How would we communicate with customers?
How would we manage projects?
How would we build accountability?
What equipment would we use?
What installation methods would we adopt?
What technology could eliminate unnecessary work?
How would we create opportunities for employees to grow?
And most importantly:
What kind of company would we actually want to be part of?
Those questions became the blueprint.
Grand River Fence Company
This wasn't supposed to be Neiko's Fence 2.0.
It needed its own identity.
It needed to represent more than one person.
It needed to represent the team that would build it and the community it would serve.
And there aren't many names more connected to West Michigan than the Grand River.
It runs directly through the community we call home.
So the company became:
Grand River Fence Company.
A West Michigan company built from years of experience, mistakes, education, relationships, and lessons learned inside the fencing industry.
The second time around, the goal wasn't simply to build a bigger fence company.
It was to build a better one.
Building Better From the Beginning
That means understanding our numbers before chasing revenue.
It means creating defined sales and production processes.
It means investing in training.
It means building accountability into the organization.
It means using better equipment and installation methods when they produce a better result.
It means developing leaders instead of simply hiring labor.
It means adopting technology when it makes the experience better for our customers and our team.
It means constantly questioning whether there is a better way to do something.
And it means recognizing that building a great company isn't something you ever really finish.
We're still learning.
We're still improving.
We're still making mistakes.
The difference is that we've built a company where improvement is expected.
Together We Build Better
Eventually, all of that became something much simpler:
Together We Build Better.
Those four words represent far more than how we install a fence.
Because one of the biggest lessons from this entire journey is that nothing meaningful gets built alone.
A great fence requires a team.
A great customer experience requires a team.
A great company requires a team.
And a strong community requires people willing to invest in one another.
That's why Grand River Fence Company exists to create more than fences.
We want our employees to become better at their craft, better leaders, and better versions of themselves.
We want our customers to feel informed and respected throughout the process.
We want to create opportunities for the people who choose to build this company with us.
We want our community to be better because our company operates in it.
And we want to contribute to raising the standard of an industry that has given us an enormous amount in return.
We're Still Building
Today, Grand River Fence Company serves homeowners and businesses throughout Grand Rapids and West Michigan.
We build wood, vinyl, aluminum, chain link, specialty, residential, and commercial fencing.
We continue investing in driven-post and no-dig installation methods, better equipment, better training, better systems, and better technology.
But those things aren't really the story.
They're the result of the story.
The real story is everything that had to happen before Grand River Fence Company existed.
Starting with almost nothing.
Learning how to build a fence.
Learning that building fences and building a business are two completely different skills.
Learning from success.
Learning from mistakes.
Stepping outside of one company and seeing the fencing industry from a much broader perspective.
Bringing two veterans and business owners together.
And finally getting the opportunity to ask:
If we could build it again, what would we do differently?
Grand River Fence Company is our answer to that question.
We're building a company our team can be proud to work for.
We're building a company our customers can trust.
We're building something our families can be proud of.
We're building something rooted here in West Michigan.
And we're not finished.
Because for us, "Together We Build Better" isn't just about the fence.
It's about everything we're building around it.
Grand River Fence Company
Together We Build Better.
