About four years ago, I was looking for the best way to make some money. My dad told me that I should try mowing lawns. Being a lot younger at the time, I didn’t really want to pursue that opportunity at first. Eventually, I started mowing two neighbors lawns, along with my own. The following year, 2018, I stepped it up a notch. My uncle owns a few properties in Saint Paul, so my older cousin and I worked together to mow about 25 lawns per week. It was during that year that I really figured out how to mow a lawn and make it look good. On top of this work, I continued mowing the two neighbors’ lawns and my own. Towards the end of 2018, I had decided that I wanted to create a business out of mowing. My friend Charlie and I got together and figured out how to run a lawn business in early 2019. This was when Hughes Kern Lawn Service was born. We created a nice flyer, printed a few hundred out, and passed them out around our neighborhood in mid March. In addition to our own houses, and the two neighbors I mowed previously, we had gained about 10 more customers. We originally expected to get 30 customers out of this, but ended up being glad that we got 10 because we had to pull our equipment around by hand on a cart. That summer, we both learned a ton about communicating with customers and keeping them happy. Customers would call us with requests or complaints, and we used those to grow our business, and keep future customers happy. Being partners with somebody really helped both of us to sharpen our skills and hold each other accountable.

2020 was a great year. Hughes Kern Lawn Service had maintained about 30 total lawns that summer. We upgraded our set of equipment to two sets of equipment. Everything was looking great, but because of COVID, my driver’s test was postponed. I had already bought a truck to use for mowing, but I ended up not being able to drive it until early June. For the entire month before, Charlie and I had to haul our equipment behind our bikes and bike around Saint Paul to get to where we needed to go. This got us a ton of attention on the streets, so we ended up getting almost 10 new customers in the first two weeks, all because people drove past us and stopped to talk to us. In addition to many more customers, we also kept the business sides of things more official. I learned basic accounting, and we kept books and created financial statements for the company. The one problem was that our schedules were too different as we got older to keep going. As a result, I changed the business to Hughes Lawn Maintenance. I found a good group guys from my high school that wanted to mow lawns with me, and would still do projects on the side with Charlie as much as we could. Ever since, we have been running smoothly and providing good service in hopes of saving money for tuition and the future. Our goal for this year is to continue providing excellent service at an excellent cost while also promoting the “student run” factor of it. We wouldn’t be where we are today without the support of everyone who has used us now and in the past, so thank you.