Hitting the books: Bob Maffei is making changes in management structure to ignite his Cape Cod operation. (inside the owner's head).(Maffei Landscape)

College was keeping Robert Maffei from running his landscape business. So he dropped out. "Those were crazy days," he recalls. "First, I had a couple of guys working with me; then I had five guys, then 10, then 15, and the next thing I know I'm running back and forth from college on Thursday nights, not having classes on Fridays, to run my business. Then I had to get back to Umass (University of Massachusetts) for my three o'clock Monday class."

He said bye to college to the dismay of his parents. The choice was clear to him, though. His company got a ...