While some kids spent their summer glued to their devices or hanging out at the mall, the country’s newest generation of landscapers spent the hottest days of the year grinding to complete quality jobs and build businesses. After speaking with professionals in the lawn care industry, our team noticed something special about this industry and the people involved. Right out the gate we were impressed by the number of young people starting and growing lawn care businesses. From mowing a couple of lawns in their neighborhoods, to landscaping entire churches or schools, determined young people are spotting the benefits that lawn care provides, and with their motivation and drive, growing a business out of it.
Unique Entrepreneurial Opportunity
Lawn care provides a unique opportunity for entrepreneurial minded young people. Commonly starting out with their family’s standard push mower, barriers to entry consist of time and the determination to get started. Offering far greater value and growth opportunities for entrepreneurial young people, the lawn care market for many is becoming much more appealing than “lemonade stand” style hustles or working for minimum wage. Below are the top general aspects about lawn care and landscaping that create opportunity for young grinders:
- Low initial investment: Push mowing a few lawns is a great way to test the concept!
- Reinvestment Opportunity: Expanding equipment and landscaping capabilities is a scalable business model.
- Time Commitment: For a determined young person, this is their greatest asset. They are lapping every other person on the couch.
- Resources: An extremely helpful and involved online community can provide all the needed education for little or no cost.
- Customer Accessibility: A lawntrepreneur’s initial clients are typically neighbors who will share the word if they are impressed.
- Ease of Branding: Sites such as Vistaprint allow for simple, targeted marketing through mailers and flyers for reasonable rates.
The Community
Young business owners toss themselves into a whirlwind of learning experiences while growing a budding book of clients. Navigating the various obstacles of learning the craft and building a sustainable business requires tapping all available resources, likely including a combination of family members, mentors, and the online community. We were amazed to discover the online community built by professional mentors and these young grinders!
Young lawn care entrepreneurs (or “lawntrepreneurs”) connect online to share jobsite experiences, tips, and showcase equipment. Conor, a 14-year old with 25 lawn care clients stated, “I have probably spent more time watching videos of people cutting grass than I actually have spent cutting actual grass.” 
Young people, like Conor, consistently learn about the challenges facing lawn care pros from channels like Brian’s Lawn Maintenance. Creating videos on safety, business operations, technical tips, and sharing their favorite resources; seasoned professionals like Brian fuel growth in the industry by creating helpful content to spur on young folks to success.
Documenting their own trials, equipment additions, and tips; young people generate videos to give back to the community that inspired them. Some channels that stood out to us include:
It’s truly amazing to see this young community support each other season in and season out! These young lawntrepreneurs are a rare breed. It’s a joy to follow the expansion of their businesses through client base, equipment, and service offerings.
Impressive Beyond Their Years
The lawn care industry’s strong community and low barrier to entry create fertility for starting a small business. Purpose-driven youth can further prove their reliability, attention to detail, and accountability and in-turn earn themselves loyal customers.
For the youth out their building up their landscaping businesses, their advantage is being reliable and producing quality results beyond their years. They actively take advantage of the lower expectations, due to age, to impress customers and grow a lasting, value generating company. The industry recognizes these high achieving students as well through scholarships for higher education, typically formal business education.
Serving The Lawn Care Community
As a small start-up business ourselves, it is our pleasure to serve this community and cheer on entrepreneurs in lawn care! We are proud to serve this industry and provide quality hearing protection to determined trade professionals. We always encourage the use of certified hearing protection such as ISOtunes when growing your business.
Are you a young lawntrepreneur? We’d love to hear your story! Share it with us in the comments below (or social media) along with your email address and you might receive a free pair of ISOtunes Xtra for your business! To express our support for the youth in the landscaping trade, we will be sending out 10 units of our Xtra model to impressive lawntrepreneurs!
We also encourage you to follow Brian Fullerton’s Young Hustlers series where he interviews young, motivated lawntrepreneurs. *wink wink* *nudge nudge* Check out his videos and look for his special discount code in the description before shopping ISOtunes hearing protection in order to save $10 on your order.
