How I Started My Lawn Care Business With $0
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Green Industry Podcast, your go-to guide for building a more profitable and thriving lawn care and landscaping business. Your host, Paul Jameson, is the author of five bestselling books, including Cut That Grass and Make That Cash, and his latest, Level Up Your Money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now, get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jameson.
Well, today I'm going to share the story of how I got started in business as an entrepreneur, as a small business owner with pretty much zero business acumen, zero understanding of how to run a business. And how I got started was desperation. I was living in my friend's house. And he had moved out to Kansas City with his wife and children for one year. And he asked me if I would like to stay in his house for the year. The mortgage was $928, which was a lot of money back then. And to me, coming out of college and basically having... pretty much no steady job, $928 was a challenge. And so he's like, well, what you should do is just get a few roommates, you know, have them each pay 250 to 350 for a room, get three, four, five of them.
He's like, you'll be making money. And he sold me on it. He's like, yeah, just, just, this is a five bedroom house. Well, four bedroom and other one could be used as a bedroom. So five bedrooms, essentially. He's like, how, you know, you take the master, fill out the other four rooms and you'll be making money. Well, Long story short, ain't nobody. I got it. I didn't recruit anybody. So I'm staying in this big old, you know, five bedroom house by myself. And I got to scrape together to nine hundred twenty eight dollars. Now, all I had for income at the time was I was in like a multilevel marketing company called Mel Luca and they sold vitamins and things like that. So I was. you know, hustling, you know, calling all my relatives.
And then, and then basically if you ever been in one of them things and everyone avoids you like, Oh, Paul's calling, he was trying to sell me on vitamins, you know? And thankfully like my aunt and my mom, you know, bought them to help me out. But then everyone else is like, yeah, I call him like five times and then they blocked me. So I was quickly realizing that wasn't the career path for me, but I had a little bit of money coming in from that. And that was about it. And so I was getting, uh, close to having to pay my next round of $928. I'm just looking at the calendar and I, you know, I think I had like a two weeks, uh, I had to pay him on the first of the month. And so I went out on a walk in this neighborhood that, you know, neighborhood I was living in.
I went on this walk and they got this nice little area that kind of, um, I was living in Georgia at the time. And, and, um, Atlanta area, and there's one little nice spot in the neighborhood that was kind of on a hill, and you could kind of look out in the distance.
How did Paul end up living rent‑free and why was $928 a huge pressure point?
It was a nice view, and it's around sunset time, so it was a beautiful night, and I'm just walking around the neighborhood kind of praying, God, help me. That was my prayer. Help me, God. God, help. And I get to this cul-de-sac, and I just kind of stop for some reason, and I look at this house in the cul-de-sac, and there's a for sale sign in the yard, And the grass looks like it hadn't been cut all year. This is springtime in Georgia. So the weeds are growing, the grass is growing, everything's growing. And clearly this house hasn't been touched since the previous year. And I was just thinking to myself, if you're a real estate agent and I'm not, you know, again, I didn't have much business knowledge, but I had enough common sense.
Like if you're trying to sell a house, it's called curb appeal. Why don't you want the house? Like, you know, if I, if I rolled up to buy that house, I'd be like, this looks, this looks raggedy. You know what I mean? Let me get a sip of water here. So I called them. I called the number on the real estate agent sign thing.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:03–3:10
2
How did Paul end up living rent‑free and why was $928 a huge pressure point?
3:10–16:02
3
What sparked the idea to call a real‑estate agent about the overgrown yard?
16:02–28:58
4
How did Paul decide on a $60 price and what was his first mowing contract?
28:58–35:27
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Green Industry Podcast
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