Greg Gathers, founder and president of Custom Tree Care, wrote his book, “The Code” because he wanted to share the principles he lives by and believes anyone can benefit from.
continuous improvement in his personal life. These principles he lives by, which together comprise “the code,” are life lessons that he believes anyone could benefit from. “About eight years ago, I just started writing down tips or thoughts in regards to running
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a business that I thought would be useful for others,” Gathers said. “That’s as far as it went until recently when I decided I should turn all those thoughts into a book.” Never having had a mentor, Gathers learned many of his business principles the hard way: through his own mistakes. The goal of his new book, of course, is to share those principles with others so that they might avoid some of the traps to which many entrepreneurs and first-time business owners are susceptible. “When I started my business years ago, I didn’t know anything about business. I learned as I went, but I also read a lot of books by other business owners, and that helped me out quite a bit,” Gathers said. After putting his anecdotes and lessons down in ink and conducting some research on publishers, Gathers landed on CreateSpace, a selfpublishing company that would distribute his book through Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Once he had an edited manuscript, he simply uploaded it to CreateSpace, who then published his book and now distributes it at no charge to Gathers. “A lot of it is geared toward business, but a lot of the lessons you use in business can be
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tied to real life,” Gathers said of his book, which was published in November 2017. Gathers said he found the self-publishing process to be pretty simple, and to those who are wanting to publish a book themselves, his advice is straightforward: “Just start. What stops a lot of people from doing something is simply not starting. They’ll overanalyze the problem and talk themselves out of it, or they come up with a bunch of reasons as to why they can’t do it.” By living his life by “the code,” Gathers has seen both great professional and personal success, and now also is able to call himself an author. “Always do better today than you did the day before,” he said. “You’re not going to succeed every day, but if you commit to improving each day—that is how you succeed.” Whether it is power grids or public speeches; Facebook posts or fallen pine trees; running a business or writing a book; Sterbenz, Castaneda, and Gathers do what they love, and love what they do. Now, as published authors, these three have expertly positioned themselves to share what they have learned as leaders in their community, leaders in their businesses and true students of life. TK