Reinvent Your Career: Success Tips from Teresa Carleo

When Teresa Carleo started her landscaping business 20-plus years ago, she was literally building a business from the ground up. Her only experience consisted of fond childhood memories of working in the garden with her parents. So she started at the bottom by taking a minimum-wage job watering plants.

Carleo worked to expand her knowledge, eventually breaking out on her own and founding Plant Fantasies Incorporated. Success didn’t come without struggle, but, today, Carleo’s thriving business offers a wide range of services—from flower arrangements and ground-floor landscaping to rooftop gardens—for some of New York’s top real estate developers. Here, she shares a few of her success tips:

Be Flexible
It’s easy for those in creative fields to become tied to a specific vision for a project. Carleo says she had to learn to be patient with clients and practice keeping their vision in focus. “In the beginning, I had a customer who wasn’t happy with something. I was hurt and got a little defensive about my work,” she remembers. “It took time to learn the patience and flexibility I needed. You have to be interested in what’s not working for your client and be willing to find ways to fix the problem. Really being able to listen and make changes is a valuable skill. Be humble, and learn to put your ego aside and look at the situation from the other person’s perspective.”

Show Your Enthusiasm
“A great attitude can help you get the contract,” Carleo says. It’s a fact that people enjoy working with others who love what they do. She’s discovered that showing her enthusiasm for her work has a way of drawing people in. “I’m passionate about making the city a nicer place. Whether it’s planting a tree or putting in a lawn or rooftop garden, people love it. They’ll stop us on the street to watch and ask about what we’re doing.”

Add Value
If you want to build a reputation that garners profitable referrals, Carleo says it’s critical to give more than what is expected. Whether it’s by including extra flowers to put the finishing touch on an arrangement, or taking extra measures to ensure a job is completed with excellence, going above and beyond makes Carleo memorable. The same principle can be applied to your business. “When you develop a good reputation by doing the right thing and making your customers’ jobs easier, they come back to you.”

Get Your Name Out There
Even for successful businesses, marketing must be ongoing. “It’s always about getting your name out there,” Carleo says. And she recommends using a variety of avenues: trade or industry events, Web sites, e-zines and personal communication, among others.

“Your clients need to be reminded about the different services or products they offer,” she says. She gives the example of calling on an existing customer after the newspaper ran a story that included a picture of one of her recent projects. “We’d done some work for him in the past, but he thought of us as landscapers and didn’t realize we could also put in rooftop gardens,” she says. By initiating that call, she earned a new contract with her customer as well as a referral to a new client.

Don’t Give Up
In her business’s early years, Carleo says building a customer base was a challenge. “The biggest obstacles for me were my own feelings,” she remembers. She fought off rejection and loneliness, and eventually carved a niche that suited her personality and her passions. That persistence paid off. “I stayed through the storm,” she says. “Don’t give up.”

Additional Reading

• From Minimum Wage to Rooftop Gardens
• The Sweet Life
• It’s Not Enough to Be Noticed