Way back in 2010, Houston Hinson (our owner) decided to make some extra cash on the side to pay off his student loans from his finance degree at East Carolina University. He figured he had always preferred mowing the lawn over doing the dishes as part of his chores growing up, so off he went to find people who needed their lawn cut.
A Sputtering Start
Houston knocked on doors, talked to people in the grocery store line, and reached out to friends to try to drum up business. He didn’t have a lawn mower or even a truck to transport said mower. Not one to be easily stopped by a trivial obstacle, he borrowed a push mower and a truck from his dad and drove it to the first of his six new customers’ houses.
Once there, the mower wouldn’t start, no matter what he tried. It was hot; he was sweating and wanted to cry, quit, or both. Finally, not getting anywhere with the janky old mower, he drove to the nearest Lowe’s at Crossroads in Cary, NC, to buy a new mower. He had $500 in his account to get him through the rest of the month, but the cheapest mower he could find was $400. With no other options, he bought the mower, drove back to the customer’s house(with barely enough gas to get there), and had to put it together from the box in the cul-de-sac. Since he didn’t have extra gas for the mower, he also had to siphon the gas from the old mower into the new one.
On the very first pass on the lawn with the new, functioning mower, a giant black snake appeared right in front of him (God has a sense of humor, let me tell you). Today, Houston doesn’t bat an eye after having seen thousands of snakes, but back then, this office boy was at his wits' end. Nevertheless, he persisted and finished the one-acre property after four hours from having first arrived, using a push mower, a blower that wouldn’t stay on, and a shoddy weed whacker.
In the beginning, whatever the customers asked him to do, he said yes and then figured out how to do it. Some of these jobs turned into huge losses, like when he quoted a tree removal job he thought would take 3-4 hours that ended up taking 3 days. Yet, he persisted and steadily grew his customer base.
A Child and an Idea Are Born
Again, resourceful as he is, Houston set out to test different nontoxic products and application methods on select customers’ lawns. After burning out a few lawns with too-strong products (we’re forever thankful to forgiving customers like Will and Kristin), he started to figure out what worked and what didn’t.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
In 2018, Houston swiped right on a blonde girl named Hanna on a dating app. Our very first text exchange, in fact, happened while Houston was sitting in a classroom retaking his pesticide license. In that class, the teacher told them they should wash their work clothes in a separate washing machine from the one the family uses, since the weed control products’ toxins are so pervasive that they’ll contaminate the next load of laundry. Yet the chemical manufacturers claim that the grass is safe to walk on after spraying, once it's dry.
Hanna was a marketing professional at a Fortune 500 company and was also very much into organic living. With her Nordic upbringing, she was used to a clean environment and was horrified by the safety standards in America. Avid follower of the original crunchy moms like Wellness Mama, Food Babe, and others who advocated for organic foods and household products, she was well aware of the dangers of glyphosate and other toxic pesticides.
