Total Landscape Care Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/201225
Staged for Growth BY BILLY R. SIMS Jason Gordon learned the challenges and rewards of running his own business early in life. A s a teenager, Jason Gordon spent his summers working with two uncles in New Hampshire who ran their own businesses. Both worked hard and left a strong impression on Gordon – one an owner of a well installation and maintenance company, while the other ran a sanitation installation and repair company. "I learned running your own business allowed you to be more independent, and the harder you worked, the more you could potentially profit from it," Gordon says. Gordon later entered college and graduated with a degree in turf management from Delaware Valley College in Pennsylvania. He took related jobs along the way, "basically working the grounds of various golf courses," and eventually landed a position as a spray technician at Congressional Country Club for the 1997 U.S. Open Championship. For many landscape professionals, this would be a dream job. But Gordon was not content. He had dreams of running a business. That drive and vision would eventually lead him to founding Total Turf in Westchester County, New York. Early Rewards Gordon's first break came in 2001 while he maintained the golf course of a large estate in Chappaqua, New York. With this one account as a booster, he started Total Turf. "I figured as I grew older if I didn't try it [running a company], I might regret it," he says. Gordon and one other worker took whatever jobs came their way the first two years, sometimes driving up to two hours for landscape project work. "It was occasionally stressful, and I wondered how we would get by," he says. "I had $6,000 in the bank N O V E M B E R 2013 TotalLa nd s ca p eCar e.com 25