About

A lot of people ask me, “Are you the father or are you the son? So what is the story behind the Father and Son name anyway?”

Well, it all happened like this: Back in the spring of 2003 my son, Buddy, was 13 years old. We were homeschooling him along with with our 4 other children.

Buddy is very bright and intelligent, but languished in book work. My wife, Teresa, would struggle all day with Buddy to get him to finish his schoolwork.

Homeschooling was quite frustrating for Teresa as well as Buddy! We really liked the ability to participate directly in our children’s education but the situation with Buddy was getting intolerable. We tried a number of different things to help him get through his schoolwork but nothing worked at helping motivate him. After giving it some thought, I came up with a totally radical idea. I felt a good solution to accommodate Buddy’s learning style would be to start a Father and Son lawn service business. I could teach him everything I had learned over the past 15 years by building, running and then selling my own pest control business. And at the same time, I could incorporate math, science, history and other subjects into the day’s activities. I ran the idea by Buddy and he was definitely enthused so our business was born!

We started out mowing lawns, doing yard cleanups and any other landscape related work we could find.
Before we bought our first truck, we used the family minivan with magnetic signs on the two front doors to pull a 12 foot trailer that carried a riding mower and a push mower. All our hand held equipment went in the back of the van!

The whole thing was a great learning experience for Buddy! As a young teenager, he got to observe how to provide good customer service, how to negotiate, what it means to complete a job even if you bid it too low and what it was like to earn and manage money. 

In addition to learning business stuff, we listened to various audio books on history and classic literature as we drove from job to job. We used the newspaper to discuss things like government and current events.
Our business steadily grew, but in 2009, during The Great Recession, business slowed and Buddy decided to serve our country in the U.S. Army. While Buddy was in the Army, I hired “substitute sons” that helped me run and continue to grow the business.

Buddy served 6 years in the army, 4 1/2 years as an EOD technician including a deployment to Afghanistan.
After completing his enlistment in 2015, Buddy was not sure what he wanted to do. He investigated a number of job opportunities, had some job offers, thought about going back to school but nothing really piqued his interest. 

He returned home from Colorado Springs where he had been stationed and decided to work with me again until he figured out what direction he wanted to take.

By this time, we had narrowed the focus of our business from mowing and landscaping to fixing unhealthy lawns and Buddy started working as one of my lawn technicians. After a few months, he began to realize, working in the family business was something he truly enjoyed and decided to stay.

Buddy eventually became a supervisor and then moved into the position of sales and customer service.
It’s been an incredible experience having the opportunity to work side by side with my son over these years and I feel extremely blessed to have done so! The Father and Son name still accurately reflects our business.