When you work together eight or more hours six days a week and you’re also father and son, you need a little bit of business downtime.
Bill and Scott Neave, chief executive officer and president, respectively, of Neave Landscaping, Wappingers Falls, N.Y., actually get together for dinner on Sundays after spending the whole week together at work. But there’s one rule: “We don’t talk business,” Bill says.
Bill admits that every once in awhile they catch each other incorporating work talk into conversations and have to remind each other to save it for Monday.
They also make sure they take their annual hunting trip together once a year to get away. “We always hunted and fished together so this is something we want to keep doing,” Bill says. “We try to enjoy one another and still try to keep a normal father-son relationship. We’ve always had a close relationship and we want to maintain that outside of the office.”
The author is Managing Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at nwisniewski@lawnandlandscape.com.