My first experience with TKG was helping to uh, “legitimatize" the camping trips as a team building event. TKG was just starting out and we were all still pretty young, with no or few children, and we managed to have a heck of a lot of fun. We traveled from local campgrounds to places in southern Ohio, and even out to Lake Raystown in PA. In the beginning, there were under ten people and as Geoff invited our entire families, it grew to over one hundred.
These trips were a foundation of the relationships many of us built at TKG. We became invested in our co-workers not just as people we worked with, but as family too. To this day, many of the friendships built on those camping trips are ones I value the most. After almost a decade of camping trips, my family came, and I started as an official TKG employee. My role as an actual employee at TKG went from a not great web developer into the finance and HR department, a role that better fit my background and training. Working in finance and HR, I had opportunity to grow as I learned the ins and outs of running a business. When the time came for me to leave TKG, I did so to support my husband’s goal of running his own plumbing business, That Plumber. Geoff was extremely supportive of this goal and immediately helped with branding, our website and marketing. I still call on Geoff regularly for his opinion on different decisions we make.
When I would interview people to work for TKG I always started with his origin story of wanting to be a businessman, “like Dad,” having lunch a couple times a day and spending time with people. Looking back over the last 25 years, I’m proud to see how he has grown his business from the basement, with less than a handful of people, to his current team. It has been a long and not-always-easy road but Geoff, with the unyielding support from his wife, Amy, has always taken the time to make sure that their team felt valued. From the opportunities at work, to Christmas parties at the house, even to baby showers to share in the celebration of our families. My time at TKG was formative, from the knowledge I gained and the people I met, I am grateful for it.