This story is really going to date me, I know.

This story is really going to date me, I know.

I graduated high school in May of 1999 at the ripe old age of 18. A young man full of hopes and dreams. Excited to head off to college that Autumn, but not before savoring every last drop of that hot Georgia summer. All of my friends would be headed off in different directions in a couple of months, you see, so I wanted to hang out with them and do stuff that kids do at that age. Go out to eat, attend concerts, summer festivals, and the like.  

Well, I knew it would be costly. I also drove an old gas-guzzling Chevy Blazer. And gasoline, while it wasn’t nearly as expensive as it is now, sure wasn’t free.

I quickly realized I needed a summer job. But the lifeguard position at the local pool, a staple of teenage summer jobs, had long been filled. Restaurant jobs were an option but generally required working at night, which didn’t seem appealing to my 18 year old self. They also paid once every two weeks and that just felt like too long to wait.

I started thinking about how I’d mowed my neighbor’s lawn a few times in the past and he always paid up right after I finished. The instant gratification seemed ideal. Plus, you can’t mow grass at night. So I thought a little grass-cutting business might be the right move. After all, my dad had a small trailer that was big enough to haul a lawn mower. And he had a lawn mower. And gas cans. I ran the idea by him and he offered to let me use his equipment as long as I mowed our lawn, paid for the gas on my own, and promised not to lose any of his stuff.

My old Chevy did not have a trailer hitch, though. That was a problem. But my best friend, Chris, drove a Jeep and it did have a hitch. So I called him up and talked him into partnering with me. His dad also had a weed eater we could borrow so it seemed like we couldn’t be stopped at this point .

I fired up our old Hewlett-Packard desktop computer and created a Microsoft Works document that would serve as our marketing flyer. I added a Clip Art image of a lawn mower with the words “Lee’s Lawn Care” above and “Two High School Guys Making Money for College” below. I figured that would sound endearing to some folks and also lower any expectations about the scope of our abilities. It’s better to underpromise and overdeliver.  I also put my pager number on the flyer. That’s right. Back in those days we didn’t have cell phones. We had pagers. Beepers as you might know them. 

Our marketing strategy was unsophisticated yet effective. It was also inexpensive. I printed off one copy of the marketing flyer from our home printer and drove over to Kinko’s. I had them print 500 copies on a thick, red, 8.5 x 11 inch flyer. Fortunately we lived in a densely populated residential area with a plethora of subdivisions.  We took the top off of Chris’s Jeep and, while he drove, I hung out the passenger side with the red flyers and a roll of scotch tape. We bobbed and weaved through neighborhood after neighborhood. He’d pull up to a mailbox and I’d tape a flyer to it. We were two rebels without a cause. Ignoring every “No Soliciting” sign we saw. We would do this for hours until all the flyers were gone.

Around 5pm that evening my pager buzzed for the first time. Then again. And again. People who had gotten our flyer were calling. It was a feeling like no other. Both nervousness and excitement. It was sort of like catching a tiger by the tail and then having no idea what to do with it. Needless to say I learned a lot of lessons that summer.  

I’ll elaborate on the next part of the story in more detail later.

We were no entrepreneurial geniuses. There was no epiphany about business ownership that happened. We didn’t go on to make a million dollars that summer. We didn’t drop out of college to pursue any careers in lawn care. But there were seeds that got planted.

Lessons I Learned Here:

#1. Bias Towards Action - Developing a great plan upfront is nice. Executing on a decent plan quickly is likely better.

#2. Be Resourceful - If you don’t have a proverbial trailer hitch, partner with someone who does. Look into your network and enlist the help of those around you.  

#3. Test the Market Inexpensively - If no one called us back then we only lost the cost of the flyers (and maybe some gas).

#4. Narrow Focus - We just started out doing mowing and basic jobs. We didn’t try to do things we weren’t good at that spread us too thin.

#5. Follow Up With Your Prospects! - Everyone that called us about a job got a call back. Some jobs we didn’t get. But most we did.