How I Turned a Mowing Gig into Millions, FROM MOWING LAWNS TO MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR SUCCESS, I grew up in a poor part of the Midwest, the middle child in a family of eight. Even though life was tough, I always knew there was something bigger out there for me, something beyond just getting by. At 15, I had two job offers: McDonald’s for $5.15 an hour, or cutting my neighbor’s lawn for $15 per yard. I figured I could cut a yard in under an hour….
I grew up in a poor part of the Midwest, the middle child in a family of eight. Even though life was tough, I always knew there was something bigger out there for me, something beyond just getting by. At 15, I had two job offers: McDonald’s for $5.15 an hour, or cutting my neighbor’s lawn for $15 per yard. I figured I could cut a yard in under an hour, which meant I’d be making about $20 an hour. So, I went with lawn care, and before long, I was knocking on doors, picking up more clients. By the time I graduated high school, I had 100 properties and had earned over $40,000. Not bad for a kid with a lawnmower.
When I went off to college, I majored in Entrepreneurship. My older brother thought I was wasting my time, but I knew this was my path. Things got tough during my junior year when my girlfriend got pregnant, and I had less than $100 in my account. Around the same time, a friend of mine asked me to join his tech startup. He had developed a way to send content to mobile phones, and it was already making about $200 a day. I jumped in and helped him tweak the marketing strategy, and in just a week, our revenue shot up to $1,200 a day. We were on to something big.
By the end of that summer, the company was pulling in $90,000 a month. Two years later, we were making $8 million annually, and eventually, we sold the business to a venture capital firm. Today, I’m the proud father of four kids, and life is good. But I’ll never forget where I started—with a lawnmower and a dream. My journey from cutting grass to running a multimillion-dollar company taught me that no matter where you come from, hard work and persistence can take you anywhere.
