 |
| Bohdan Dolban |
Bohdan Dolban started thinking about his own business
when he was just in grade school, when he saw his mom pay the paper delivery
man. Soon enough, Bohdan started his own paper delivery route, a business that
kept him busy for the next five years. He liked the freedom it gave him.
“Unlike my friends,” Bohdan recalls, “I always had my
own spending money.” In fact, until he got married and decided to buy a home,
he never needed to borrow money. Of course Ukrainian Credit Union Limited was
more than happy to help Bohdan out on that count.
Soon after he purchased a home, he lost his job as a
sales agent with a big multinational company. This was quite a shock for a
diligent and hard-working man like Bohdan. Through no fault of his own, he
found himself short of money for the first time in his life. He knew he had to
do something fast. As luck would have it, he heard from a friend that someone
was selling a small distribution business – specializing in the distribution of
plastic, glass and metal packaging for the food processing and industrial
materials industries. This got Bohdan thinking again about his earlier dreams
of owning his own business. And better still, his last job was in a very
similar line of business. Now he could marry his experience with his desire to
run his own business.
Bohdan Dolban was born in Toronto in 1967. His parents came
to Canada from Lemkivshchyna, his father Ilko is from the village of Kolochava
and his mother Daria is from Pavloma. The Ukrainian National Federation of
Canada brought his parents together when they first met at the UNF Hall – no
doubt many have a similar story to share!
Bohdan is a graduate of Ryerson University (Business
management) and Sheridan College (Business Corporative Administration). After
graduating, Bohdan landed a job with Consumers Glass and after a time was
transferred to work in the United States. Bohdan witnessed many glassmakers shut
down as consumers started to prefer plastic packaging. Sensing the need to
adapt, he found a job with a plastic packaging maker Graham Packaging. The loss
of this job was the catalyst to starting his own business.
Bohdan’s long-term clients are located across Canada and the
U.S. Among them are such industry leaders as Castrol Motor Oil and Transcan. In
the decade and a half since he started the business, Bohdan is always looking
for new product lines and new opportunities to grow his business. He is
currently talking to a pomegranate juice maker from Iran and planning to enter
the biotechnology sector.
Being a natural salesman, Bohdan noticed a long ago that
people prefer to buy from someone who is pleasant and a good communicator. Bohdan
believes in being natural and honest and he remains himself whether at home or
at work. He employs modern technologies like tele- and video-conferencing,
which simplify his communication with hundreds of his colleagues, but he values
face-to-face communication too.
Bohdan believes that the secret for success in business is to
be in the right place at the right time with
the right product at the right price. This means being out among people as much
as possible, for example, “in the past,” he says, “golf would help me grow business
relationships a lot. Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to
find time for golf, so now I can only find time to go two or three golf times a
year.”
Bohdan also makes sure to support charitable projects and
believes in the old adage: “What you give away to others, will come back to you
a hundredfold”. He regularly gives to the Help Us Help The Children foundation,
supports St. Joseph’s Church in Oakville and different causes in Ukraine. He is
an active member in both Plast and UNF.
Bohdan believes in the saying that he heard in his
youth: “Your own business even in the worst case is always better than working
for someone else”.
“Anyone, who wants to start their own business, but
is hesitating, needs to take that into account,” advises Bohdan. “And never
forget your family. My business takes a lot of energy and time, but everything
I do is dedicated to my wife Marusia and my daughter Talia.”
Razom Media
Bohdan Dolban: 905 891 1485, bohdan.dolban@sympatico.ca
No comments:
Post a Comment