I got my dad into landscaping, more or less. When I was 17, a handful of my buddies and myself used to do a lot of downhill mountain bike racing. I was at one of the last races of the year, took a good spill after I overshot a landing, and broke my arm in 2 places. My dad, who was currently unemployed after spending 25 years in a fairly well paying sales job, figured he'd handle my 20 lawns for me. One of my customers had a house on the lake but lived in Seattle. He was a home builder and was building a spec house about 1/4 mile from my parent's house as a chance to make some coin in another market. Dad said "Guess I can handle this job" and wham, we were born. Since then, we jumped into excavation last year and did well, but dad decided he couldn't handle that business without me (still in college 160 miles away). So he sold the larger equipment and still does landscaping/hardscaping. He could have easily retired at 48 when he was laid off his sales job, but he's 55 now and the choice was clear.
There were days where I wanted to do things my way and he'd do them the other. The funny thing is, I know more of what I'm talking about when it comes to this kind of work. I don't think my dad ran our 312 more than about 15 hours in the 300 hours that we had it, but I loved it when he'd try and tell me how to do something. I'd always remind him of this when he'd come out to a site and see what was going on, I was more or less running the show, but he'd come out and take a look at what was going on and have no clue as to what I was talking about, get in his truck, and take off.
