"Be not afraid of growing, be afraid of standing still“
- Chinese Proverb
Most people ask me how I went from a financial trading desk to working outdoors in the landscape industry. Answer is simple, life changes and you change with it. After twenty years sitting in an office watching the city landscape grow and change everyday, I did not. My growth was stagnant, the financial industry dying and zero fulfillment. The so-called dreadful day of layoffs came. For me it was a sense of relief, freedom. Question was, I needed a new career but where do I start? Well where do you always start at the beginning! I spent the majority of my earlier days mowing lawns, cutting trees, gardening and general landscape for family and friends. If I could do it then, I can do it now, I just needed a chance. Most people see a difference between finance and landscape. I see similarities. Principals are the same.
Plan - What plant or what stock? What's the climate of the season or climate of the markets?
Service/Upkeep - Customers need to be serviced. Weeds cannot be in gardens and you have to weed out failing stocks. Water the flowers, water the good stocks.
Growth - Trees grow/die, stocks go up/down.
Well I was given my chance with Castle Landscape where I was able to hone my skills, learn new ones and parlay them into a blossoming career at John Mini, where you can dare to imagine and grow each and every day. Like they said in the good old days on Wall Street, sky's the limit.
“Life moves pretty fast, If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”
-Ferris Bueller
#BornToGrow
John Angelone, Outdoor Installations Foreman