Toni Reece: Hi there. I’m Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living magazine. Today I have Tom Connelly with me. Welcome, Tom.
Tom Connelly: Hi. Thanks for having us.
Toni: Tom, take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Tom: I’m 53 years old, married, father of three. I have a landscape business that is coming up on our 30th year that’s based in Sinking Spring. We tend to serve the Wilson, Conrad Wiser, Wyomissing, Governor Mifflin areas, and we provide pretty much full-service outdoor property maintenance.
Toni: Okay. Let’s go into the Project, okay? What does inspiration mean to you?
Tom: I’ve seen this as kind of a prequel question to the interview, and it means a lot of things. It’s really tough to define what that means, but in a lot of ways inspiration means to me continuing to get up every morning, get out, and give it your best effort; get out and try to do the right thing. I think inspiration to me means trying to make tomorrow a better day than today was.
Toni: So, do you know when you’re inspired?
Tom: I don’t know that being inspired hits you like an on/off switch or there’s a moment when you’re inspired. I think that enthusiasm that comes with inspiration kind of waxes and wanes sometimes, but generally speaking, I think you know when you’re on top of your game and you know when you’re having a good day and things of that nature. I think that that’s what inspiration means, and when you are able to feel that you are recognizing your goals, I think that that’s inspiring.
Toni: That’s fantastic. Do you think recognizing that you’re hitting those goals or at least for some people, it’s getting the goals in place? Do you have to be enthusiastic to do that?
Tom: I would suspect that that depends on the personality of the individual. Some people probably need to be methodical to do that. Some people need to be driven to do that. Some people need to be led to do that. I think just based on my personality, there might be like—enthusiasm might be the way to approach it.
Toni: You have given a great definition and understanding of inspiration and when you are inspired. When that happens to you, how do you take that and put it into practice here in Berks County?
Tom: Again, for me, I find it to be—when you say “take that” it’s difficult; it’s as though it’s packaged or it’s a commodity that you can really put your hands on. So, I would just say that that sense of maybe not inspiration but being inspired, trying to put that into practice in Berks County, I try to do that in my professional career and in my personal life in what I am doing in Berks County. Again, I don’t think that there’s anything unique to Berks County that I’m doing that in as opposed to some other place, but I think the idea that you just bring your best game.
In a career standpoint, I think it’s about trying to keep the people that you work with inspired. I think it’s about providing a good work environment. I think it’s about good customer interaction. I think ultimately, it’s about putting a good product out there, whether it’s landscaping or whether it’s any good or services being provided. Again, I don’t know that that’s unique to Berks County, but I think that that’s how I try to maybe inspire others, or how I try to act within my professional life that is inspiring.
Toni: Plus, you have a company that’s been in Berks County for 30 years, correct?
Tom: That’s true.
Toni: So if you recognize that it takes your definition of being inspired to inspire a workforce, to inspire customers to do the best quality job you can do, I would imagine that has an extreme ripple effect across Berks County with the work that you do.
Tom: You know what? I’d certainly like to think so, and I would certainly like to think—and I’m speaking not just for myself when I have this conversation, but the people that work with me. I’m fortunate enough that they are passionate about what they’re doing. They are professional. They are good at what they do.
I think that all of those people, and when you talk about a ripple effect, whether that’s me directly or the people that I am associated with through my business, all of these people are creating a sense of, I’ll use the word enthusiasm again. They’re creating that sense of getting people excited about the potential of their homes or the project that they have envisioned. I think that that’s a great legacy, a great tribute to the people that I work with, that they can really be imparting that idea and sense of enthusiasm on other people.
Toni: I absolutely love the way this particular interview is going, because a lot of times when people talk about how they take inspiration and put it into Berks County, it’s usually in community work or it’s outside of their home or their work, and they’re taking that feeling. To take this from a business owner and realizing that you are transferring that component of your professional life onto others who then maybe taking it into their own homes as well, I think that’s really critical.
Tom: It’s one of the most rewarding parts of my job is—it almost feels like a legacy. In my case, I’m very drawn to the tangible parts of that. I always joke about, “Where’s the satisfaction in shuffling the papers from the left side of the desk to the right side of the desk?” I do think the idea that there’s some tangible aspect of the work is great to impart on our clients. “This is what we can do, and look how attractive this is, even in the winter.” Or, “What if we did this? It would flow a little bit better.” All of those kinds of ideas when they come together, it’s just a good feeling when it all hits.
Toni: So, who in Berks County inspires you?
Tom: When I was looking at some of these prequalifying questions, they were all tougher than you would have thought, but in terms of who inspires me, I’m lucky enough in my career and in my personal life to really run into and know just a broad spectrum of people. In some ways, I think that they are all inspiring. I’m lucky enough to work for some executives in some of our local companies that are generous with their time and have been good enough to sit down with me for 30 or 40 minutes and just have a question and answer session. I think that there are plenty of people in this area that I view of as my work colleagues, whether it’s another business that’s in the industry, or another business that we would use to do business with; if it’s a fencing company or a subcontract company, or other vendors.
I’m lucky enough to have met those people. Even to the extent that the people that I work with that come in every day, do the grind, and are in it to take care of their families and are leading good lives, everybody top to bottom, I think that that’s just inspiring, and to see those people, regardless of who they are. I think there’s a lot of good to be taken out of anybody. I think that that’s inspiring.
Toni: So Tom, what would you like your legacy to be?
Tom: The questions didn’t get easier as they got further down the piece of paper. You know what, I mentioned a little bit about the tangibility of my work, and at the end of the day in a professional sense, I want to leave the world at least a slightly nicer place than when I found it. If that’s the idea of planting trees that I get to look back on in 30 or 40 years and see that that’s a legacy, I think that’s really cool. That for me is a gift that my job gives me.
I think in terms of maybe a personal legacy, I’m awfully proud of my family and what we’re building and continuing on; lineage, for lack of a better word. But at the end of the day, I would just like my legacy to be that I was a pretty good guy most of the time and tried to do the right thing most of the time, and that I wouldn’t be a guy that you would hate to spend an hour in a car with kind of thing, and that we’d have something to talk about, and was just generally speaking a good guy.
Toni: A lot of people get tripped up on this question, because they think it’s how people are going to remember me when I’m gone, but yet you’re living your legacy very single day.
Tom: Yeah. Very true.
Toni: You have throughout this interview spoken to how you’re doing that. I do want to mention that I’m feeling one particular word from you that is coming through on this interview, and that is pride. You seem very prideful and inspired, but very prideful.
Tom: I appreciate that, because I think I am very aware of the hard work that we have put in to get where we are. I think frankly, I’m very aware of the product that we put out there and the caliber of that product. I’m certainly very proud of that. I would like to think that there’s hopefully a mix of humility with that pride, but at the same time, as much as being proud of where we are, I’m certain very grateful for where we are. I think while to some degree maybe those words are interchangeable in the context of what we’re talking about, I would look at it as much as anything as maybe a sense of gratuity with the idea that it’s certainly been a lot of hard work.
It has certainly been a lot of great people along the way. You can never rule out luck, but at the end of the day, I’m very grateful for where we are and where we continue. I’m very grateful too for what the future is going to hold. I’ve got another 10 or 12 or 15 years in this career, and based on what the past 5 or 6 or 7 have been like, and certainly all of it, I’m excited for what next year holds and the year after that, etc., etc.
Toni: And that’s not a bad place to be, is it?
Tom: No. You know what, if you like going to work in the morning, you’ve got half the other people beat.
Toni: Absolutely.
Tom: That’s also a nice legacy and a nice place to be, for sure.
Toni: Tom, thank you so much for showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Tom: You bet. It’s been a pleasure. I appreciate you having me on.
