Hoosier Lawn Man

This Pro Story

My family has been in the lawn care industry for a long time in Pinellas County. Over the past few years my father-in-law has slowly taught me the business. I have him to credit for teaching me how to do a good job, and how to take care of customers. Last season I took the leap of faith and got an edger, a 48” Gravely Zero Turn mower, a weed eater and blower and started my landscaping company in Pinellas Park with 5 yards.

I'm an originally from Indiana, and being the fan of Hoosier basketball, I named my business Hoosier Lawn Care after them. I have been in the restaurant industry in St. Petersburg for the past several years, so over time I have built up a pretty good network all over the Pinellas area. When I started my landscaping company it worked out well because of I earned a lot of personal relationships over time here. My business has grown nicely over the past year through word of mouth growing from 30 yards to 70 regular lawn clients in St Pete.

This has afforded me the opportunity to transition out of the restaurant business and into the landscaping industry running my company full time. It feels really good to work for myself, and to be in control of my own destiny. I love the landscaping business and my customers all over St. Pete.

I live in Pinellas Park, however, I service customers all over Pinellas County and St Petersburg, I am really focused on the towns of Largo, Seminole, Belleair Beach , Indian Rocks Beach, Indian Shores , Treasure Island, and St Pete Beach. I also have a cluster of lawns Gulfport, FL, and I’ll service up to Clearwater as far north as up to Gulf to Bay Blvd.

I focus mainly on residential properties in St. Petersburg, however I do some commercial locations including one large shopping center in Tampa. I try to be the eyes and ears for my customers. When I am servicing their property I will take pictures of anything out of the ordinary and send it to them via email or text. Many properties I service are beach homes and second homes for my client, so they like the idea of me keeping an eye on their investment while they are not there.

For example , one of my customers is currently traveling around the world in 80 days, and I was servicing his beach home in St Petersburg. I noticed that a large Verizon cable had come down on top of the house and I alerted him to it. I do my best to care for my clients’ properties as though they belonged to me or my family.

While I like to focus on weekly lawn maintenance and mowing , every other week is a little slower on my routes’ workload, as some of my portfolio of business is bi-weekly. During that slower week I will take on landscape enhancement projects for customers around St Pete, such as shrub cleanups, landscape trimming, garden clean outs where I’ll pull out the weeds. Alot of times a one-time cleanup will turn into a monthly lawn maintenance client because they are so happy with the transformation in their curb appeal..

Recently, I have also been offering light tree work for smaller trees such as anything I can reach with my 6” ladder. I can perform regular trimming maintenance for palm trees, and also full removals for nuisance trees like a Brazilian Pepper tree, most folks want these unsightly trees removed.

Outside of growing my landscaping company in St Petersburg, I really enjoy going camping with my kids . I just got a 8 person tent, and my family and I are doing a practice run setting it up in the back yard . My daughter and I have been having a blast camping in the back yard this past week as we are preparing for a camping trip with my church. We are going to Ft Wilderness in Disney with my church group. I attend church at Glad Tidings in St, Petersburg , we’re known as the Royal Rangers, and my brother in law is the youth minister there. I like it there there and funny thing is there are also a few other fellow landscapers that attend there as well.

Building relationships with my customers in the most important thing to me, as my customers are also my friends. Thank you for reading about my company, and I hope to make friends with you as well.