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Welcome back to the Path to Warren Podcast Episode Three. Today I want to share about what life was like when I had my lawn service, I had a lawn service real early on with a family member. I was age twelve, and it’s really important that I share this because my daughter is eight years old now and often think about how hard it was when I was growing up to earn money. And it was often funny because I would try to work at places and even at the mall, you can’t work at the mall until you’re, like, 18. So there was no place to work. My brother and I started a lawn service. It was called J&M Lawn Service for Jason and Matt’s Lawn Service. And I was twelve. He was five years older than me. He was 17, and we started just cutting the grass around the neighborhood. We didn’t have any equipment or anything, but one day, dad came home with a push more an edger, a weed eater and a little handheld gas blower. He needed somebody to cut his grass. Well, we obviously being two boys working for living at home. Dad knew that we were able to cut the grass, and he was going to pay us. So he had to buy the equipment because he didn’t have a lawn or any kind of equipment at the time. So dad comes home one afternoon with this Toro red little 24 inch push, more self propelled, meaning it walked itself. And he had the equipment. And he said, I got a deal for you boys. I want to give you you could take out a loan from me. But I want you guys to buy this equipment. And I think you could make some money starting a little lawn service. And he convinced us real quick that of all the money we can make cutting grass around the neighborhood, it didn’t take long. We were all in. I was super excited about it. My brother had a truck, so it made transportation pretty easy. But I was just hired help. I’ll never forget our first yard. Our first yard was for this neighbor. He was about 20 houses up from our house. In this neighborhood of about 100 houses. It was a nice, middle class neighborhood, our first yard. We didn’t know what to charge. So we said, We’ll do it for $20. So for $20, we mowed the grass with one push, more, we edged. We needed and blew off the driveway and the curbs. We quickly realized that was too cheap. I mean, $20. When we got the first $20. And remember, I was twelve years old, we come home with it. And dad says, Let me tell you what we need to do. So 50% of that needs to go toward equipment. You got to put 50% away for equipment. You got to use the other half. You’re going to have to create marketing material and have overhead for the books. So 10% of the total 10% needs to go toward management and marketing, and the remaining 40% you guys use for labor. So let’s break that down. So we had a $20 bill, 50% of that. So $10 went to equipment fund that we kept in a separate little piggy bank box in the house. $10 went to equipment fund and the other $10. We had to put two of that because that was the 10%. So $2 went toward this separate little envelope that we called management and marketing. And then the remaining $8 we had to split for labor. So I got $4 and my brother got $4. So that was $4. And it took us about an hour for the first yard because we didn’t know what we were doing. So I got $4 an hour for that first yard. My brother and I decided that we weren’t going to do it anymore for $20. So we said we’re going to raise the price. We went to $25 for the next yard. So that was the start of that service. Jnm lawn Service lasted for about a year and a half. We had grown the business to about ten to twelve yards a week, and they were just around the neighborhood. They were just around our neighborhood. It quickly grew because of word of mouth. That was basically it. We didn’t do a lot of marketing at the day, like, over the course of that time, we were really just trying to do all we could. My brother said he was going off to College and he had been talking about that. He was 17 when we started it. So I kind of knew he was going off to College, but a year and a half in he was 1818 and a half. He got accepted to Clemson. So my brother came to me and said, getting out of the lawn service business. And I said, Well, I’ll buy you out. So at the time, I ended up paying $400 cash for his share of the business. That was his share of the equipment and the client database and the business that we had built. I paid them, how many 14 year old kids do you know they can go into their room and pull out an envelope and pay the older brother $400 cash for a business at the time? But I bought my brother out and quickly realized there were no books when I bought them out. But that was okay. I knew where all the yards were. I knew everything that was happening because I was the one doing a lot of the manual labor, but I didn’t have a truck. So I had to just limit the yards to just maintaining the properties around the neighborhood. But I grew that business. I switched the name right away to Matt’s Lawn Service. So I went from J and M Lawn Service to Matt’s Lawn Service overnight. Let the customers know that I’m the one now with the business. It wasn’t long. I got Polo shirts made that I had a neighbor down Irmo Drive embroider Matt Lawn service on the shirts. She did a great job. And at the time, age 14, 15 16, 17, I grew Matt’s lawn service into 33 yards a week. I had two different crews. Most of the summer months I would go and I would mow each morning. I would mow probably seven or eight yards a morning during the summer. And so seven yards a week times six or seven days a week. No, I didn’t work on Sundays. That was six days a week. That was about 35 yards or so. The summer months were when it was the hottest. That was when the grass was growing the most. I still had work year round, but I really was reaping the benefits of the lawn service during the summer months, which work perfect for school. I mean, that was ideal because school was out. But I would mow one of my best friends in high school, and I hired him, and he was making at the time that percentage of the labor we would do a yard in, like 20 minutes. So before lunchtime on a Monday through Saturday during the summertime, we were cutting seven or eight yards a day, and we’d make more money in a day than my buddies were making two months working for somebody else at the time. But that Matt’s Lawn Service really shaped who I am today. I’ve really learned to hustle. I was getting paid for what I produced. The more yards I cut, the more customers I made happy, the more they told their friends, the more their neighbors really wanted their yard to look as good as the guys next to them. So my whole work ethic and ability to grow a business, to market, a business, to take care of the customer, to think about the customer. All of that was the Foundation I think was built. When I had matched lawn service. I really enjoyed handing out Flyers. I would make these little Flyers up that were black and white. Or sometimes I would splurge a little bit and get a pack of blue paper and I would print off on my computer upstairs. I would make these Flyers that said Matt’s lawn service, Mo edge weed and blow and call today for an estimate. And I would have our home number on there because I didn’t have a cell phone at the time. Those were fun times. Having a customer call the home line and my family member answer and have to pass it off to me to take down the name of the customer that wants me to cut their grass. Those were the days. So in high school, my allergies got to be so bad, though I didn’t realize it. But the more and more that I cut grass, the more the leaf mold and the grass allergy got to me. My allergies went to me or came to me one day when I was in his office, I was having to get allergy shots on a regular basis, like once a week, I would have to get an allergy shot at each arm. And I didn’t really know what the problem was or what I was allergic to. But my senior year of high school, my allergist said, I don’t know what you wanted. I don’t know what you’re going to do, but you got to do something else. You can’t continue cutting grass. And he said, It’s getting worse and worse by allergy to the grass and mold. My senior year of high school, he said, you got to quit. I don’t care what you do, but you got to do something else. I never forget those words. And so I decided I’m going to sell the business. My dad told me you’ve got something of value here. You’ve got a ringing phone. And so I found a competitor. His name was Lawn Care Plus. That was his business name at the time. Lawn Care Plus was a professional lawn care service, and he had about 100 clients, and he ended up buying my business, buying my clients, buying the equipment I built up to where I was driving. By my senior year, I had a little Toyota Tacoma truck, 4×4 had a little trailer. I had purchased two riding lawn mowers, and I already had a third one that I was using for parts. They were Craftsman 42 inch deck lawn mowers. I had two Edgers, two weeds, two blowers. So this guy purchased all of the equipment and the clients at the time and quickly turned the lawn service over and changed the name to Lawn Care. Plus, within a month of selling mass lawn service, I started a business called Pine Straw Plus. Stay tuned. I’m going to tell you more about Pine Straw Plus. In episode four, I’m so happy you guys, or enjoying the podcast. If you are enjoying it, please share it with a friend. Hit subscribe. It’s going to be a fun ride. Stay tuned for more. I hope you have a wonderful day and make a contribution. Thank you. Bye.