John Richter wasn’t a standout athlete on the baseball field, but his high school coaches took notice for another reason. Now, it’s the same trait he looks for when hiring employees at Richter Landscape Company.
“My coaches saw that I was a hard worker and that I had a desire to get better,” Richter says. “It wasn’t that I was the best athlete – far from it – but I was coachable.”
Through one of his first summer jobs at age 16, Richter found his future career in landscaping – where he saw similarities to the sports he loved.
“I really enjoyed the work and the camaraderie (of landscaping), and I knew right away I’d enjoy it as a career,” he says. “Playing football and baseball is really tough. It’s really hot, but when you have success, there’s something fun about celebrating a victory as a team. It carried over into (landscaping) with the heat, the dirt, the grime and getting over hardships together.”
By applying lessons he learned on the athletic field, Richter has coached his company through consistent 10 percent annual growth, with more than $2.5 million in 2017 revenue.
Read the full story from the January issue here.