Mark Gaudet

I didn't see eye to eye with the company's values there.

And so ultimately I did reach out to my boss now, Andrew, and I said, hey, I'm looking for a change and would be interested in working at Arborwood.

And how long did that take? How long were you at the other one? Six months.

Oh, okay.

So you gave it the scout's effort.

I really did.

And I think one thing for myself that helped was my first interaction with a board culture was at the college.

And something that I really enjoyed at the college was having teachers who weren't book teachers.

They weren't just teaching you from a book.

They were teaching you from experience.

They were teaching you from hands-on knowledge and training that they're currently using.

They're not arborists 20 years ago, production climbers 20 years ago.

They're production climbers now.

And they have the answers to all those little things you're trying to figure out.

And if they didn't, they would ask other people and they would find the answers.

Where in high school, you're like, well, what do you know about history other than reading a book? Like, you weren't there.

You've read a book.

You haven't been a practicing archaeologist or anything else.

You're reading a book and then having me read the same book.

So it was something that I really got out of that.

And that was one of the big things that I've said as to why I really enjoyed the program was because every hands-on teacher and even the in-class teachers were all practicing arborists.

And most of them, I would say, were experts or whatever you want to say.

They specialized in the field that they were actually teaching.

For the same reasons that later in my career, I would never volunteer to teach tree ID.

I'm not an expert in that by any means.