How do you transport your mower when you’re too young to have a driver’s license? Most kids rely on their parents or older siblings to get them to the job sites. This didn’t work for Philippe Provost, president of Progazon in St. Lambert, Quebec, Canada. He had a better idea: roller blades.

Big company, small company, it makes no difference. The people who operate your equipment need to be properly trained prior to going into the field. How this is accomplished, however, varies from company to company and depends on several variables, not the least of which are company size, services offered, type of equipment, and relative experience of employees.

Baby Boomers may well remember an old “Twilight Zone” episode where an ad agency executive told a laid-back employee to be more aggressive; this was a “push, push, push world”. Decades later, brothers E.J. and Blake Cox would disagree with the executive in more ways than one.

When business owners/leaders get into their 60s, it is normal to ask, “What is going to happen with the business”? Dean and I are at that age. We remember how, around 25 years ago, our parents gracefully handed us the business they had started from scratch. Like many family business owners, our parents dreamed that Walker Manufacturing would remain a family-owned and operated business for generations to come. The survival record of all kinds of businesses is about 30% per generation, so keeping the dream of a multigenerational family business alive is a big challenge.

When you grow up working in a greenhouse, receive a diploma in horticulture, and then work as a golf course superintendent for 11 years, one thing is for sure—you love green spaces.

 I don’t like stress,” says Dwight “Bud” Steinhauer, owner of Steinhauer Services in Clayton, Delaware. “Hence, I’ve grown slowly by word of mouth, and most of my customers are my friends.”