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My name is Carly and this is Toxic Workplace, Antidote Edition. These antidote episodes are meant to empower listeners who feel stuck in their own toxic workplace story. These bonus episodes will bring inspiration and motivation that will lead to a fresh perspective. This episode is especially dear to me because it's with my dad. My dad's story is one of tenacity, strength of character, and above all, putting family first.
I had the idea to bring my dad on this podcast because I was thinking how so many people want to escape the corporate grind and start their own business. But that jump from company benefits and steady paycheck into self-employment is risky. It's scary, especially if you have high stakes like a mortgage and a family to provide for. It takes incredible courage and belief in your capabilities to do it. There's no one I can think of that has inspired me to chase my dreams more than my dad.
What I admire most about my dad's story is that despite the failures from his past, he never quit his dream. And as you'll hear in this episode, nothing came easy for him. My dad's the ninth of ten kids. He came from a working class family. Anything he wanted, he had to get it himself. Growing up, we didn't have much money either, and my dad would say he was rich with daughters, referring to my two sisters and me. And that was enough. My mom was always behind him, even during the hardest times.
I know her role wasn't easy, and she is definitely a part of his success. What my dad doesn't talk about is how successful he is today. He doesn't really toot his own horn. We recorded this episode on Easter at my parents' house that sits on an acre of lakefront property. I'm not adding that to brag, but to shed light on the fact that if you push through your struggles, continue to believe in yourself, and never, never quit following your dream, you will come out on top.
All right. From Los Angeles, California. From Elyria, Ohio. All right. So let's start with, I think one really important thing to start out with is your work ethic. You didn't really have anything handed to you, right? So like, and not like a big, long thing, but I think just kind of like how you got to where you are today. Well, I really didn't have a plan. I always felt like I wanted to be my own boss, as they used to say,
or run my own company. I wasn't sure what it was going to be. I put myself through school. I paid for my own tuition, et cetera. And I remember all the classmates saying, hey, have you interviewed yet? Have you interviewed for a job and this and that? I'm like, you know, no, not really. I never really had plans to a corporate career. I had worked very hard right out of high school. I worked for a utility company.
I was able to save quite a bit of money. I went to night school, got a two-year degree, and then transferred and got a four-year degree later. So right out of college, you know, you've worked your way through college, you saved up a bunch of money, and then you start a business. I did right out of college. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I had a night job at UPS. That's how I got through college as well. And it was night, so it allowed my days to be free.
And I thought it was a perfect situation because I had saved my money. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to start my own business. But again, I really didn't have a background in any particular area. So I had an old pickup truck, and I wasn't afraid to work and went into hauling junk, cleaning out basements, mowing lawns, you name it. Just odd jobs. In fact, I saw one of my first business cards. It was called the Odd Jobist.
And that was just, I would do whatever. And then after a couple, you know, after a season, I started more into mowing, let's say. And at some point I said, okay, I'm going to pursue this, landscaping. I had majored in business finance. I don't know if I had an interest in finance and banking or the market or what have you. So after I graduated, I could go back and take courses in agronomy and horticulture and turf management.
And so I kind of used that as well as on the job training or I kind of learned the lawn care business and landscape business. But it was tough. You kind of need a combination of business and experience or knowledge. And I didn't really have either. So I stayed at it about five, six, seven years, I think. But by that time I had left UPS. So I was just trying to make it on my own.
But we also started a young family. And before you know it, I had three daughters and we were trying to just make ends meet, really. It's like when I entered the scene. Oh, you entered the scene. It was very, very hard. So by the time, work wise and financially, it was tough. I just, by the time I learned what to do and how to do it and pricing and experience and everything, basically I was broke. I was not broke, but in debt. So I just did not see a way out.
And it was very frustrating for me because I had tried so hard. I was, you know, I was, I never gave up and I just insistent that I make it. But, you know, it's kind of like, like bang my head against the wall because it feels so good when I quit. So it was kind of like that. So I left it. I did make some connections. So I took a job with the old Chem Lawn Corporation. And that gave me a corporate steady paycheck in my industry, you know, gained some experience.
But at home, it was allowed me to take care of my debts and my family and get that part in order. And that, of course, has always been most important to me is taking care of my family. Right. So getting that corporate job with a steady known income, you know, when you're working for yourself with contract type work, you don't know when the next check is coming in the mail. Yeah. And, you know, you really feel those ups and downs of the economy.
Things are good, then contracting is great. But when things go bad, the first thing to go is their landscaping deck or project or what have you. So you'd end up starving and business for a startup just comes at you from every direction financially. Right. And you had no experience even another than UPS and the utility company. You didn't grow up in a business. You never had that sort of. I had no advice. No one gave me any advice. No one gave me a nickel either.
So, no, I had to kind of feel my way through it. You know, I did learn, but it was a day late and a dollar short or a couple dollars short. It was just a tough way to go for a kid. Because at that time you were what? Like 28? Yeah, that was right out of college between night school and night working. And it probably took me six, seven years to get myself through school. And then I probably did my business, like I said, five or six, maybe seven years. So early 30s. Yeah.
But it wasn't for the lack of trying. I mean, I just I just went at it and and try to piece stuff together. Right. But there's so many aspects of a business to learn. I mean, you learn finance in college, but that doesn't really give you the tools you need to know. Absolutely not. What's our process for collections? What's our process for invoicing? What's our process for, you know, selling, getting the next kind?
I mean, and you're doing the work. So you're running the business and doing the work. The one one thing when I went into business, they said, well, you know, you have to spend money to make money. So I thought that's all it would take because I had saved a nice nest egg and I was going to start this business. I wasn't afraid because I believed in myself and how hard I could work and made sense to me that all I have to do is spend money and I'll make it happen.
Well, to your point, Carly, though, what they didn't tell you or what that saying doesn't say is you have to spend money to make money. But make sure you get a dollar ten for every dollar you spend. And that's what I did. That's what I learned coming out of it, you know, coming out. It was too late. So at the point that you decided I'm going to go get a job with a company and leave this behind and you always want to be your own boss, did you feel like my dreams are shattered or like?
Yes, for sure. Absolutely. My dreams are shattered. But I had a solid home life. So I had a small family. I had three daughters and and my wife was behind me, but she didn't want to go through that financial stress any longer. But no, my dream was was way downstream at this point. So get a corporate job. Take care of your family.
You know, try to get the best job you can. I was glad it was with Chemlon because to me, I was staying in the industry then that I had learned because, like I said, I had no experience in anything. So I was kind of glad that I took that. Chemlon went into some changes. Yeah, they had a merger with True Green Chemlon. I kind of came in there as a landscape manager, which was new to them. So they axed that as soon as the merger came on.
So that like division was eliminated. So I guess I could have stayed on, but I wanted in a way I was like, this isn't. You got a healthy dose of. Oh, I got a healthy dose of they don't care. You know, it's like, this is why I wanted to start my own business. But again, I wasn't able to. I didn't. I had no capital. So I did take another position with another corporation, but it was a small corporation, a good sized mom and pop operation.
And I did landscape management for them as a landscape manager. They also did golf course construction. So they were multifaceted and spent about five years there. But it was out of state and my wife felt, let's say, homesick. A friend that landed me a position earlier with my first corporate job came back around and actually had another company that he was starting up. And it was a national fertilizing company, very well known, and had a position for me. And it was right back in my hometown.
We're very excited to move my young family back. And by this time, I was probably in my late thirties. You know, and I had long forgotten about going back into business for myself. You know, like I say, that dream was that was downstream. But here's a corporate job right back in my hometown. We're very excited about it. And move back. And what would you say you learned from working for a corporation that you probably wouldn't have learned had you always been in business for yourself?
How a small business operates, I guess, and some of the things that you need to know, be it how to structure a corporation, how to make payroll, how to put the processes in place in a business. So in that small family operation, I observed a lot. I learned a lot of business just watching what they had done and pointing out to myself the mistakes I had made because I didn't know.
And from my corporate experience, things such as HR, a lot of marketing, especially in the lawn care business, was very aggressive. And don't be afraid to put money into marketing. That's what drives a business. Another thing I learned is deep pockets. Cash is king. You can't have enough behind you because you'll go through it and you might be good and you might be the best.
But if you can't bridge those gaps, if you've got to sell assets or personal assets or something to match things up, then you're out of business. It is like monopoly. In other words, when you land on other property and your cash is gone, you're out of the game. Okay. So you can't have enough cash. That's probably what the best lesson I learned between the corporations and the small business and my own experience early on. Which, yeah, that's a tough lesson to learn.
I learned it the hard way. Yeah. Right. But sometimes those tough lessons are, you know, if you learn from it and can still move forward. But you're kind of once bitten twice shy about going back into business for yourself. The company wanted to move me again out of my area and they wanted, well, they didn't want, they did. They merged with another company, sure enough, and it kind of doubled up positions and what have you.
And they offered me a position out of state. And my family was devastated by that because I had considered it very strongly. It just moving my family again at their ages and situations. So I took a buyout and I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do once again. So there I am thinking to myself, I left without a job, but I had a window to take advantage of an opportunity. Interviewed, interviewed. It was hard. I mean, I said, man, my resume looks great.
My best line was in an interview, I would say, I'll make you money. I guarantee it. Nothing came along straight away. And the more I got to thinking about it, I reconsidered going back into business for myself, which was taboo and even talking about to my family because of what I put them through or what we went through in the early days to consider this. But I had a much better understanding of business and cash flow and experience and marketing.
And the more I thought about that experience, I said I could do this. OK, I could do this. Now I have to get the cash together. I was that much more confident to move forward. And I knew I could work through it and make it happen if I could pull everything together. I really want to talk about that year between the time you left the corporate position and the time that you left your next kind of bridge job.
So I really considered going back into business for myself. So I built a couple of business models. Everything was in place except for the capital and being unemployed, I guess, at that time, kind of tough to get a loan. So I actually took a position outside the industry for about a year. And that allowed me to then go to the bank, borrow against my house. All right.
And at the end of the year, I left the corporation kind of a bridge job, if you would, and started my own lawn care company from scratch, from zero with my business plan. And then at this time, then with the home equity loan and credit cards that I had borrowed. Yeah. So, I mean, to put myself in your shoes, like how scary that had to be. Oh, no. I was writing checks out of my home equity line to cover payroll with with no income coming in at that point.
And it was that was a little bit nerve wracking, but I felt I did have the finance. I knew how the business would work. I knew I could grow it. The first year, let's say I plan on making 800 customers or a thousand customers on the books. I ended up with 450. So it was like, ouch. I said, hey, this is what I chose. And I knew if I did 450, then the following year I could do 500. So that would be a total of, let's say, 900 customers.
And then if I did it the third year, which is actually just two year calendar years away, I'd be at 14, 1500 customers. And that's enough to to get a toehold in the market and grow from there. So that first year, I pushed the spreader. I made the sales. I ran the phones. I did everything. I ran it out of my basement. I ran it out of my garage. I ran it out of a used van that I bought actually two. And then I had a part timer that I knew from my corporate life
that was willing to help on Thursdays and Fridays. So the first year was I did the whole thing, except for the marketing where we would telemarket and I would have as many as 10, 15, 20 high school kids on the phones in the evenings calling and telemarketing. My my daughters helped tremendously. They say, well, you know, such and such in sons now, Ken and daughters. And because I was in what, 10th grade, that was probably the most I had ever worked in my life.
And we had no choice. But to contrary, you know, they received paychecks. OK, there was. Yeah, they received paychecks and they would also then bring their friends in. Yeah. And I don't know how many kids I gave their first job to, you know. Yeah. And that's how we build our business. It was scary at times, but I did rely on my experience from each of those corporations. And within one or two years, sure enough, I went to the bank again and got approved for SBA loans.
They would have touched me 20 years before that. They want to even come anywhere near it. So I knew I had something going because I looked good to the bank. Right. So it started to get better. And I mean, it started to get easier for me from the standpoint I wasn't doing every application, let's say. You know, I could now hire technicians.
You know, this was also a time that when I left the corporation, my oldest daughter graduated high school and had plans for college, so I had to make something work. Yeah. Well, and I think the underlying message in this story for me is like you make a mistake. Your dreams are shattered, but yet you took a huge risk in spite of that. And because, well, you believed in yourself. Right. Absolutely. And you learned from the mistakes.
You didn't just continuously beat yourself up. Right. Like you eventually got yourself out of that. But the fact that you took that leap again and now you're successful, I think that is something, you know, don't be scared to get back on track. You know, if you were following your dreams and something happened and it knocked you off course, get right back on course. Sometimes you have to punt the ball. You know, you got to know and you got to have to know when to punt.
But you don't put the ball and then go to the sidelines and mope. You have to battle back. I know this is a stupid football analysis, but just like sports, you know, you don't know what comes around. You don't know what the other team has plans. You don't know what the weather is going to do. You don't. You know, so you get these things that come at you. And I had my family and my kids. I had connections in the business. So, you know, all those things come into play.
But, you know, at the end of the day, it was my plan and it was my execution and it was my determination. And it was based on the experience and mistakes. And you couldn't call mistakes. And, you know, there's punt in the ball isn't a mistake. It's a strategy. And there's a lot of ways to win the game, you know, and you just have to see what comes your way. But you also have to play. You have to give it your most. You have to believe in yourself.
And you have to believe in the people that are close to you. And my family were. I think we instilled good study habits and work habits and tenacity. I tease them. You know, I say, hey, you girls, you're tough as nails. And they are. They don't quit. I think young people that are aggressive with tenacity, aggressive in the right way. I don't mean that as stepping on people, but doing the right things and working hard. I still say that that's a way to to achieve and succeed.
Truly believe that. And it's more today than ever, really. Right. How long did it take you from the time you graduated college until the time you started your own business for the second time? I mean, that's 20 years there. Yeah. Yeah, that's 20 years. And now it's been about 20 years on my own. Build my business. And one of my daughters is my business manager and marketing manager. One of the high school kids that I hired to telemarket in high school as a 10th grader.
He now is my general manager. I think he's been with the company 12 or maybe longer, maybe 14 years. He was just a kid. He was just a kid. He's just thriving. It's amazing how well he's doing. The general manager would be considered almost like a Gen Z. I think he's that young. And Gen Zers are known to hop around to different jobs. So the fact that he has stayed at your company since high school says a lot about the opportunities that people can get working for you.
So going into managing people, because obviously this podcast is about bad management and people that feel stuck or manipulated or just in a bad environment where they can't grow. Your style of management, how do you treat your people? How do you think a good manager manages people? You know, I don't know if I think about it in those terms, because I know during my corporate life, it was one seminar after another trying to make you into that perfect manager.
I picked up tools. There's no doubt about it. You pick up this and that from HR and different departments and stuff that help you along. But I've never really thought about it. I think just being myself or just, I have a goal in mind. It's my business. So I think I've been successful mixing my personality or my traits or whatever with business. You know, the company and Ken are the same things, you know, type of thing. And they see that and they enjoy that.
So I think you're very authentic and you're genuine. And so when you are genuine and authentic with others, you pull that out of them. And so the experience, the work experience feels authentic. It is genuine. The personnel that works out the best are generally along those lines. As we started to grow and I was getting older and thinking about now what? Now where now I've grown this business and now what? So I had to set up a means of at least a management exit plan.
So I took my best people and I talked to them. I said, hey, this is what I want to do. I would like to have you step up and basically run it. And the general manager that's there took the ball and ran with it along with my daughter. And then probably the hardest problem, I guess, if you could call it that, was stepping back, was letting it go. And I'd be on the phone or a meeting and say, well, you know, I can come in there and fix this, but I'm not going to. You guys need to figure it out.
And I said that because I knew they could. OK. And boy, if you can find a person like that that you can say that to and then it does get resolved, then you really have something. Now, have they made mistakes? Probably not as many as I have, but, you know, surely do. I still watch over a little bit. But it's the trust, right? So you trust that they're going to make good decisions. You're not micromanaging everything they do. I see a work ethic that I see that I saw in myself.
I see caring about their families. And that's important that it's not just a me type of thing. And that kind of runs throughout the company. You know, that's what I'm looking for. Right. And so then not to be all corporate on you, but then you're building this culture. Right. And it's tone from the top. So you're hardworking. You care about family, family oriented. And then it has now trickled down. Even without me being there. Even without you being there.
Yeah. Which is why I hear these toxic workplace stories. And even though they'll say, well, the owner, we never really saw them. So we can't blame them because they were never there. But really, no, you can blame the owner of a company if a place is toxic, because they have they have to know site. They should know. They should know. Yeah. And if you show me that, then then I'll show you someone who's kind of lazy.
In other words, that owner is lazy because he doesn't want to step back into that workplace. He'd rather not have to do that and have someone that's maybe toxic, but gets the bottom line or gets it all done or gets this or that. But he knows he's he's lent something slide. And, you know, I guess to me, that's lazy. And you care. Yes. You care about the business. But then you also care about what's happening inside the business. And the people that have moved up with me are also people that care.
Yes. We're at a size that is sufficient for everyone that's employed there. We keep growing. We've grown every single year. I hope it continues. And I think it will. Is there anything you would tell yourself? Like if you could go back in time, maybe at any point, is there anything that you wish you could tell yourself that you know now that you didn't know then? You know, I not really. And I know that sounds stupid, but, you know, I sized up the moment as best as I could.
And I lived with it. It kept my family safe. I felt I was always making a move forward. I was always looking for an opportunity. You know, I moved forward in my jobs and my positions because I felt there would be a future in it. I didn't know. I wasn't sure. But I felt it matched me. It kept my family safe. And I'm going to try it, you know, to look back and say, you know, this or that.
Well, I don't know. Maybe I wish I, you know, something like, I wish I would have started lawn care when in my 20s. Well, I didn't know how. It took me two corporations and a credit line to find out. It's one of those things where even if you went back and said anything, you had to make those decisions in order to figure things out. Nothing would have made it any easier. You know, I guess I could look back and instead of starting my own business, go get a job.
But that wasn't what I wanted to do at that time. I felt that being my own boss, that was how I was going to make it happen. And things would just fall in line because I worked so hard and I believed in myself. Yeah. Even to go back and be like, hey, everything's going to be all right. It sounds like you kind of already knew in your gut. You know what? Everything is going to be all right. It was even when it wasn't the financial loss that I took in my 20s lingered into my 50s.
I was always behind the eight ball financially, not affording down payment on a home. We drove a Corsica while all the other families had a minivan. And you know, oh, my goodness. And I would often look at myself and say, you know, you're college educated, you're smart, you work extremely hard. You know, what's wrong? But you know what? I always got up the next day and went to work, too. I didn't pout, I didn't stew, I didn't lay in bed and oh, my poor me, this and that.
I feel like even with my own situation, when I was going through that hard time and I went to the grocery store and my credit card was declined, it was like the worst at the worst point of life where I was. And I had to walk out of there with James and Josie as babies with a declined cart of food. And I could have easily gone to you guys and been like, I need money. But I was just like, it's fine.
There wasn't ever a point where I was like, oh, no, my like, like I believed in myself that it's never it's not really going to be a big deal. It's a big deal at the time. But it's like don't let this crush you. What are you going to do but to move on? And in a way, it is funny that fate does intercede and maybe not as dramatic as a bolt of lightning. But something comes along that the right contact comes along at the right time.
Sometimes that failure puts you in that position to receive that opportunity or that that that connection. And you go from there. It doesn't make it you know, doesn't make it any easier. I mean, being behind in bills and not having, you know, not keeping up with the Joneses. Right. But you can't let that you can't let that destroy you.
You can't let that just crush you so much because you're driving a Corsica and your friends are driving BMWs and you know, you can't go to Disney World and you're right. Like, yeah, you got to just happy with what with what you have, even if it's nothing. But you did all the work to get there. You did everything right. You thought I checked all the boxes. Yeah, you did everything that you thought it would take and you still end up behind the eight ball and that is demoralizing.
And to point it low, Ebs in my career would be when I had to leave because of the merger in my early 40s going, oh, boy, what do I do now? Well, and that's another thing, because I do get a lot of people saying, hey, I'm in my 40s or 50s and I'm I feel hopeless because no one's going to hire me and I'm out of a job now. So here you are in your early 40s in my early 40s. And again, checking all the boxes, making all the you know, had the education.
I had a beautiful resume, but I had no offers come along that I felt was a good fit. And that was extremely, extremely frustrating. And then I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to start a lawn care, pushing lawns at at 43 years old. I think back now and I'm like, I wish you was 43 again. But, you know, that's a lot of physical work. I think the fact that I had always been in lawn care or landscaping or physical work allowed for that.
But I wouldn't advise somebody at 43 to start pushing lawns for a living and trying to do several hundred dollars in lawns one after another. I mean, it entails no lunches, quick breakfast, you know, weather conditions nonstop. I mean, they're not going to do that. Well, you know, in the traditional career, by the time you hit 40, you should be about to be partner. You've you've worked 20 years in an industry. In an industry that I've given my career to and really getting nothing offered for me.
But I sure knew the business and then, you know, and what that route. Well, and I think your desire to be your own boss, right, that you do have a strong desire to to pave your own way, to be your own person in your own created environment. Once I built the business plan, then that came back to me. But up to that point, I had only thought about taking care of my wife and family through a corporate job. And I had promised them and promised myself that I would not get in that situation again.
But once I built that business model and I think myself, I could do this. But then, you know, of course, in the back of my mind, I'm like, well, you know, I'm in my I'm four, I'm over 40. Is this what I want to do? And but then I went back to that plan. And that's what drove me.
Maybe it's like an athlete getting back into sports or whatever you used to do as a kid comes back to you like, oh, yeah, you know, I started laying that business model one year on top of another on top of another thinking, man, five, seven years down the road. This thing, you know, this is where this is what's going to drive me. This is where I'm going to be. And sure enough, the thing is, it did pay off because now you have a very comfortable life.
Very, very comfortable. I've got, you know, the girls are like, Dad, what do you want for Christmas? What do you want for your birthday? And I'm like, are you guys kidding me? There's nothing we can give you that you can't just get already get yourself. You know, we're not fancy people. We're not humble beginnings. And we're thankful for that. But staying humble and, you know, that's important, too. And, you know, we do. We work hard and we always put family first.
Dad, I'm so proud of you and honored to be able to share this story with the rest of the world. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you have a story to share, please go to ToxicWorkplacePodcast.com and click on Be a Guest. Your story will be told anonymously. All names are changed to protect the employee and the company. And don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts.